Vocational versus Theoretical

[sawyl]

Today's question: are some qualifications worth more others? My grandmother said that she thought that it was a good thing that vocational diplomas were improving the balance between practical and theoretical subjects.

For no good reason, other than to be difficult, I argued that the idea was founded on a false dichotomy propagated by literary intellectuals and that it was quite clear that the scientific subjects were superior, involving as they do a combination of both pure and practical reason, versus the purely practical reason of the vocational and the purely pure reason of the theoretical.

Needless to say, I wiped the floor with all comers and left a trail of broken intellectual corpses in my wake.

Comments

[drspleen.livejournal.com]

it's an interesting point. i was talking to a guy who had been doing "environmental management". i said something along the lines of "what's that, like catchment flow regimes, or creek habitat design" (cos i knew he was working in freshwater). to which he replied, "there's no science, it's mainly policy"... it does explain some things though. to me this seems like insanity, how can you understand the policies if you don't do the underlying science... but i have seen a large number of jobs which seem to require a good understanding of policy. it strikes me as the job market equivalent of studying to an exam...