| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/13/2009 8:51:29 PM | ok as the question was posted...how many great minds had formal training ?? like how many were just brilliant without any education to help ???/ or was it always university that had brought out the best minds and not just someone who was very intelligent, a natural genius ???
Does that exist and if so who ???? | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/13/2009 8:57:08 PM | Quite frankly, all of them. The people who write the history are the ones who make it. How many white men were given credit for "naming" peaks in USA? I'm fairly certain those same peaks were named something ELSE by the natives, but the natives didn't write the history books.
So, re- your topic, the people who define what a "great mind" is are the ones who make the rules. I doubt they'd think that the world's most genius potato farmer is a "great mind", but I think s/he probably is. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/13/2009 9:19:12 PM | | I don't know the answer, but I think CassaGo has a point that the ones who were recognized mostly all had education, else nobody would have bothered to recognize them. It's kind of a shame that many people think education is the same thing as intelligence. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/13/2009 9:56:12 PM | From what I've gathered, many had formal training, but their spark of genius was something either evident in their youth, and encouraged in their schooling, or it was not recognised when young, and they studied and worked on their own, to develop themselves.
I'd be inclined to say that university can help to improve one's mind, but this simply isn't true for everyone. If you fit into the university model, then university helped you to develop. If you didn't fit in, or you didn't go to university, then you often had to develop it on your own. But even so, it only helps. You have to have the desire within you to succeed in a subject, and if you didn't, however clever you were, and however good your university was, it just didn't happen, because "garbage in, garbage out". You have to put something worthwhile in, to get something worthwhile out, and a university cannot make you work, you have to do that yourself. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/13/2009 9:56:24 PM | Child prodigies evidently have great minds prior to any university training:
Sho Yano graduated from Loyola University - Chicago at the age of 12.
Michael Kearney became a college professor at 17.
Kathleen Holtz entered UCLA law school at 15. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/13/2009 11:30:09 PM |
ok as the question was posted...how many great minds had formal training ?
Many of them.
like how many were just brilliant without any education to help ???
All of them. Newton had no formal training in calculus... he couldn't have, he invented it.
or was it always university that had brought out the best minds and not just someone who was very intelligent, a natural genius ???
University doesn't produce intelligent people, intelligent people merely attend university - just look at the marks required to get into university. That's not to say that university doesn't improve intelligent people, and thereby make them more intelligent. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/13/2009 11:32:42 PM | | I'd say all of them. Higher education is for teaching ideas already developed, not developing new original ideas. Actually, working in an education environment and having a radical new idea can be hindering to your career. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/14/2009 7:19:50 AM |
University doesn't produce intelligent people, intelligent people merely attend university - just look at the marks required to get into university. Germany doesn't use marks anymore, they're on the euro. I know that's not what you meant, but really, money means more than grades for getting into a university (outside of scholarships, and only a small percent get those). | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/14/2009 7:31:26 AM | On the other hand, it's fairly clear that formal training cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and that we're easily misled by credentials into believing that someone has talent.
Pace, our sorely missed Dubya, who attended both Harvard and Yale. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/14/2009 8:03:53 AM |
I know that's not what you meant, but really, money means more than grades for getting into a university (outside of scholarships, and only a small percent get those). SOMEONE has to pay for university lectures' salaries. Why not the students? Besides, it's a growth industry now, education, and in any growth industry, the more money you pay, the better quality product you get. It's just that what universities are selling, is qualifications, not education.
If we wanted universities to sell education, then we'd have to make their certification the same as any other products. You cannot sell meat to humans, unless it has passed certification by the local board of health, or you KNOW that the buyer will not feed it to humans. There is only 1 grade, pass or fail. Finally, meat certification might be raised to a higher level, but it never drops, and if it DOES rise, then any meat currently on the market that was certified to the previous grade is automatically invalid, and has to be re-certified.
If we did that with education, then you couldn't apply to employers without stating that you hadn't got a degree. There would only be a pass or fail in most subjects, and the pass rate would be to an absolute standard, not a proportion of the students, as is now, and if standards changed, they would ONLY ever be raised, and not lowered, meaning that you could increase the syllabus, but nothing could be dropped from it, and if you did change the syllabus, then everyone alive and employable with a degree, would find their degree invalidated, unless they re-took their exams.
If all that was true, then Dubya would have to publicly say that he has no more certification than rotting meat that was butchered in Harvard and Yale. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/14/2009 8:10:09 AM |
On the other hand, it's fairly clear that formal training cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and that we're easily misled by credentials into believing that someone has talent.
Pace, our sorely missed Dubya, who attended both Harvard and Yale. 
I worked at a University for many years. I never saw so many bright stupid people in my life. What you "really" learn in University is:
1. How to use your credentials to make you appear more important than you actually are
2. How to make common sense answers sound like an exciting research project that needs to be funded
3. How to break the rules to good writing and make your work sound more complex using unfamiliar terms to describe familiar concepts.
4. How to drink at the local campus pubs
5. To accept how poorly administration is run and ignore it
6. "Academic Culture" which is really a classist culture putting those most educated on top because they are there to promote higher education, not a healthy environment in which to learn in.
7. How to protect your work from other academics and your professors stealing your research and your ideas claiming it as their own....Being educated gives unethical people more tools to be more unethical.
8. How to protect yourself from blame when things go wrong because those more educated like to blame those lower down on the totem pole for their errors.
Those that are the most successful typically have:
1. Families that helped provide for their University education so they don't have to carry that debt load with them.
2. Families that have good contacts so they can skip a lot of the ladder climbing their poorer peers have to go through
Einstein would not have become the Einstein we know if it wasn't for the British Professor Sir Eddington, who was the only one who could understand his ideas, taking up his cause and fighting for his ideas. The Theory of Relativity almost got lost due to academic prejudice and antisemitism going on in Universities. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/14/2009 11:28:55 AM | ggarbo, well done my friend. Took alot of balls to say what you have said. And i know alot of academic elitists will reem you for what you have said, because it makes all those years spent seeking higher education pointless. Well other than job oppertunities, because well....Anyone can purchase and understand a textbook no?
This being said, i am a highschool dropout yet very sucessful and at a very young age. I have exchanged words with phd's and professors alike, and honestly... I dont feel i am missing anything at all by not being formerly educated.
Higher education is a big industry and a great maker of money, thats why jobs 7 years ago that required no formal education now do. To force people to waste time and money to get a peice of paper, to get the same job a highschool drop out could accel at years prior.
Just another one of those crazy things that we are forced to accept. Or are we? | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/14/2009 11:32:15 AM |
I worked at a University for many years. I never saw so many bright stupid people in my life. What you "really" learn in University is:
1. How to use your credentials to make you appear more important than you actually are
2. How to make common sense answers sound like an exciting research project that needs to be funded
3. How to break the rules to good writing and make your work sound more complex using unfamiliar terms to describe familiar concepts. Did you go to my university? You've just described all my course lecturers. I found it very ironic, that the lecturers in my school who were regarded the best and smartest teachers by the students, were the least regarded by the faculty, and those regarded as the best by the faculty, were those who taught the simplest courses in the most complicated ways. Made them sound really clever, because they sounded like they knew what they were talking about, but you didn't. That was, until you had to revise for your exams. Then you had to go over their work again and again until you got it, and by then, you realised that taught ever so slightly differenty, the material was really simple, and would only have taken a couple of weeks if taught without the waffle.
5. To accept how poorly administration is run and ignore it
6. "Academic Culture" which is really a classist culture putting those most educated on top because they are there to promote higher education, not a healthy environment in which to learn in.
7. How to protect your work from other academics and your professors stealing your research and your ideas claiming it as their own....Being educated gives unethical people more tools to be more unethical.
8. How to protect yourself from blame when things go wrong because those more educated like to blame those lower down on the totem pole for their errors. That's why I saw little purpose in going into academia.That's why I didn't take my lecturers' requests and continue in academia. I saw how much it was based on politics, and I didn't have the political skills to match it, at least not then.
Einstein would not have become the Einstein we know if it wasn't for the British Professor Sir Eddington, who was the only one who could understand his ideas, taking up his cause and fighting for his ideas. The Theory of Relativity almost got lost due to academic prejudice and antisemitism going on in Universities. Not just Einstein. Where would Darwin be without his "bulldog", Thomas Huxley? | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/15/2009 4:36:29 AM | A great many of us "great minds" are hiding out in the boonies and in small universities, etc. We don't wish to blind the general populance with our brilliance. Also, it never pays to show your "true intelligence" in the current "sheeple" society.  | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/15/2009 5:41:57 PM |
Did you go to my university? You've just described all my course lecturers.
Universities are known to be one of the biggest most competitive number driven work environments. In environments like these, there is major loss in productivity due to fear and competition between peers.
Those that survive best in these environments do not tend to be the brightest but those who can participate in psychological manipulation, harassing and bullying behavior to come up with results (causalities along the way is an acceptable loss so no worries there). If you are a Narcissist who got your PhD by paying other people to do your assignments, you'd probably do very well in a University environment....after all, you got the job done with the least amount of effort. That's considered working smart in a University.
People who are truly intelligent tend to be less violent because they can think of other ways to deal with their problems and don't need to bully or manipulate to do the same job. Unfortunately, bullies are completely threatened by this type so many are deterred from entering that environment or forced out when they get in.
A person would receive a far better education if we went back to the days when you could become an apprentice and over years (while working) gained new levels of experience and new jobs based on your ability, not a piece of paper. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/16/2009 9:41:47 AM | | As a lifelong autodidact I am relieved to read I am not the only one who has figured out how many idiots go to college while poorer and smarter kids are left out. I only wish that education was open to all who can benefit from it without as some else said the massive debt. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/16/2009 9:56:00 AM | education can, on occasion, be a detriment to a really great mind.
In order to come up with something new, you usually have to think outside the box. Education tends to force you down a path that others have already walked down, which can prevent you from discovering anything new. If you avoid formal education you can make your own path.
I hope that makes some kind of sense. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/16/2009 10:06:45 AM | Depends on your definations- what is a great mind? Isn't a greater mind someone who discovers something without years of training? What is formal training? At what point does formal training become less important(ie college/university)?
Without defining these, we could go round and round. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/16/2009 12:49:05 PM | I only wish that education was open to all who can benefit from it without as some else said the massive debt.
It IS!!!! it is called the library and Ebay. Any book you could want containing anything is available in one of those 2 places. Very cheaply as well.
Edit...
You can even get ahold of those books that oddly enough require a signature from a teacher to get by finding a dealer on Ebay and requesting them.
I am not meaning the answer books I mean those higher class books that many do not allow out of the classroom ;)
I have gotten a few on genetics this way. Untrusting little suckers LMAO... | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/16/2009 1:29:51 PM |
It IS!!!! it is called the library and Ebay. Any book you could want containing anything is available in one of those 2 places. Very cheaply as well.
You don't get the magic paper from the library or ebay (well, maybe from ebay, but I wouldn't trust it). You could know more about a subject than anyone else in the entire world, without a degree it means absolutely nothing. Sad. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/16/2009 1:47:27 PM | | True, I was speaking with a fellow one night and prattling on about the early history of New England and the role of Roger Williams and Dr. John Clark in the development of the US constitution, and he was floored bt the fact that I was "just a carpenter" and he had a degree in history and didn't have the knowlege I had. Yup it's just the sheepskin that matters. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/16/2009 3:02:35 PM |
You could know more about a subject than anyone else in the entire world, without a degree it means absolutely nothing.
What do you mean it means nothing? Are you meaning that you could not go to work someone without that piece of paper?
That is the ONLY thing it may effect. The knowledge is all that is needed. the only time the piece of paper hanging on the wall is needed is for when you want to work for someone else. It is to show off to them that you are worth hiring.
Working for yourself and using that knowledge learn is a no paper required situation.
Look at it this way. IF someone is willing to hire you then simple math should tell you that by you working FOR them then that means you will bring them in more money than they would be paying out to you.
So it is simple... Cut them right out of it. If you have the knowledge but no paper then that means you will have to sell your work yourself.
Once your work is being sold (just like it would be working for someone else) then the work sells itself. it is called a portfollio. Everytime you manage to convince someone to allow you to do something for them as a sub contract basis then you have one more thing to add into your portfollio.
In the world of business and in the fast paced world ACTIONS ALWAYS speak louder than words. I can assure you that if you know what you are doing and have a list of work done that someone can see first hand that in fact you do know what you are doing then it would be foolish to worry about if you do or don't have a degree.
The bottom line dollars are what matters most and by cutting out that middle man you can basically undercut someone that would hire you to begin with.
It is the knowledge you would be seeking. Besides, you would need to pick up a few extra skills along the way to be able to make it work like the business skills but in the long run that will help you to stand out of the crowd over someone else that is just working for someone else.
Don't let the paper hanging on the wall or the people dishing out those pieces of paper stop you from doing anything... it is JUST a piece of paper. There are people all over this world that has that paper and still can't find anyone to hire them because they listened to someone else that said all you need is the degree. The degree does not make the person. the actions coming out of the person makes the person. We are not what we have, we are what we do.
Talk less do more is the way to success. Many with those degree talk a lot but when the rubber meets the road they can't do much of anything without someone else doing many things for them.
These are my opinions. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/16/2009 4:47:07 PM | | The formal training of today is a very recent invention. Education of different kinds goes back a ways. Seeing that the human mind is capable pf greatness unless it is defective, and that humans have been around for thousands of centuries, my guess is that most of the great minds of previous generations did not have formal training, and those of our time who have not had formal training have been too busy laughing to make themselves known as such. Laughing, eating pretzels, and doing cartwheels. Your mind is as great as you could be bothered to put it to use. Any thought that has been had so far, you can understand, and you are excused from going one step farther only when you deny your potential and don't give it a try. Formal training exists primarily to inhibit greatness, or there would not be any people so convinced of their own limitations that doing mindless work would satisfy their ambitions. | |
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| HOW MANY GREAT MINDS OF OUR TIME ...HAD FORMAL TRAINING
Posted: 6/17/2009 9:58:32 AM | "Don't let the paper hanging on the wall or the people dishing out those pieces of paper stop you from doing anything... it is JUST a piece of paper. There are people all over this world that has that paper and still can't find anyone to hire them because they listened to someone else that said all you need is the degree."
Lovely posting! try practicing medicine or law without that "piece of paper" Watch what happens to you.
Some cases we NEED that "piece of paper. Perhaps a better way of getting them would be to be able to write the "final exam" (at a small cost, say 20 bucks!) and be certified that way. Imagine someone, who, say, knows a lot about the law, but can't really afford the schooling. He/she studies it on their own at home. Pays twenty bucks. Passes a BAR exam...instant lawyer, who would be "just as good" as those who paid big bucks to go to school to learn these things.
A doctor? Someone who wrote the different exams, then was assigned ( assuming they passed said exams) to intern work in a hospital. They become a full fledged doctors without the huge expenses and without endangering the public that they are working with.
But...universities have forced gov't to assume that people have to have "formal education" in order to practice many a trade. The average guy used to be able to do most of their own home wiring work. Many still can. Have it checked by an inspector, and if it passes grade, it is certified and insurable. Doing that today? You almost HAVE to have an electrician in. Or a plumber. Or you HAVE to go through an apprentice program.
Perhaps those "sheepskins" could be handed out to those who can actually PROVE their abilities without paying the huge dollars to the schools. Home education is recognized by public school systems...why can't university or college be forced to do the same? Only takes an exam.... | |
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