Que tal uma reflexão sobre estes números?

Arts degrees become the preserve of the wealthy
Study shows wealthiest students dominate humanities and academics fear tuition fee rises will deepen problem
Fears are growing of a "gentrification" of arts and humanities degrees as new figures reveal that the courses have become the preserve of wealthy students.

Statistics released to the Observer by the Sutton Trust, an influential education charity, show that 31% of those who graduated in 2008 with degrees in history or philosophy were the children of senior managers – the socio-economic group with the highest income. Across all English university courses, an average of 27% of graduates were from this group.

Language graduates were also disproportionately from the wealthiest homes, with 30% from the highest income group. In comparison, non-arts and humanities courses – with the exception of medicine and dentistry – had far fewer students from the highest-income group. Just 17% for education, 22% for computer sciences and 23% for business studies were from the wealthiest homes. For medicine and dentistry, the proportion was 47%.

The data are part of a forthcoming study in conjunction with the London School of Economics that was done before changes that could further deter low- and middle-income students from applying for arts and humanities courses.

When Lord Browne, the former BP chief executive, publishes his review into university funding next month, he is expected to recommend to ministers that tuition fees – currently £3,290 a year for undergraduates – should rise to as much as £5,000 or £7,000 from 2013.

Browne is likely to propose generous help for poor students, but academics fear that a rise in fees could turn poorer teenagers away from degrees in the arts and humanities in favour of career-oriented courses.

Next month the government will announce its comprehensive spending review, which will cut billions of pounds of Whitehall money from university coffers. Officials are said to be considering slashing the universities' £4.7bn teaching budget by 75%. This would hit arts and humanities courses hardest because universities have been told to protect "strategically important" subjects such as science, technology, engineering and maths. Academics have warned that arts and humanities could end up only in high-ranking institutions that admit fewer low-income students.

The Sutton Trust data, which uses official figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, show that in all English universities, 19% of students come from the four socio-economic groups with the lowest income – mainly made up of those whose parents are in manual or unskilled jobs. Only 15% of those who graduated in 2008 with degrees in languages, history or philosophy had parents who were in these groups. Computer science, in contrast, had 28%.

Lee Elliot Major, director of research and policy at the Sutton Trust, said he was concerned that state schools were "so preoccupied with core exam results and league-table rankings" that less time was being devoted to the "cultural enrichment often required to excel in more creative subjects".

Ucas figures show that while 9% of students in all degree subjects come from independent schools, the figure is 23% for language degrees and between 12% and 20% for history, classics and archaeology degrees.

The Sutton Trust believes disproportionately low numbers of low-income students enrol on arts and humanities courses, fearing they may be less employable than if they take other subjects.

Professor Ben Knights, director of the Higher Education Academy's English subject centre, said many in his field were worried about the social class mix.

Cuts to higher education could see arts and humanities courses confined to universities that were "solidly funded and have a lot of research prestige". Knights added: "Other universities could do other subjects. There could be a progressive gentrification of arts and humanities." A study in 2006 showed that 43% of language lecturers were based in the UK's 20 most research-intensive universities. Professor Michael Kelly, director of the Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies subject centre, said several language departments were scaling back in anticipation of cuts. "My expectation is that a swingeing cut to higher education funding would... [leave] languages looking quite vulnerable in a number of institutions."

Este artigo, retirado do The Guardian, é assinado por Jessica Sheperd.

Um dos meus heróis,

entre os muitos e distintos que integram o grupo dos Founding Fathers, é, sem sombra de dúvidas, John Adams, nomeadamente pela fortuna e pela arte de ter partilhado a vida com uma mulher superiormente inteligente, Abigail Adams.
As cartas trocadas entre ambos devem ser de leitura obrigatória.
Recorde-se, por exemplo, a ironia da que ela lhe destinou a 31 de Março de 1776: I long to hear that you have declared an independency - and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, ... Do not put so much unlimited powers into the hands of the Husbands.

Lembre-se também a resposta de Adams a 14 de Abril: We have been told that ... Children and Apprentices were disobedient - that schools and Colleges were grown turbulent - that Indians slighted their Guardians and Negroes were insolent to their Masters. But your letter was the first Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and powerfull than all the rest were grown discontented.
O sentido de humor, presente em ambos, é algo a reter.
Uma série sobre a figura de John Adams começou agora a ser emitida pela Fox.
Quem tiver acesso a canais por cabo poderá vê-la aos Domingos, pelas 21.30h. O primeiro episódio foi ontem, ignoro quando será de novo emitido. Fiquem atentos.
A não perder!

Delette

Orwell explicou, com lucidez, de que forma o totalitarismo consolidava o poder através do apagamento da memória. Que não se tratava de um mero exercício ficcional, comprova-o este famoso exemplo em que Trotsky, já caído em desgraça pelo estalinismo, é apagado da fotografia em que surgia junto ao palanque em que Lenine discursava.
Que não vivemos num regime totalitário é uma evidência.
No entanto, o exercício de apagamento da História também é uma realidade em democracia e... uma tentação para muitos governantes.
Por que motivo terá sido removido do You Tube o video do jovem que parodiava a Ministra?
Dificilmente esqueceremos, porém o rosto deste jovem!
Provavelmente, mais depressa esqueceremos o rosto de uma Enid Blyton de segunda.

Este jovem é o meu mais recente herói!

A paródia que ele fez desta Ministra da Educação - signo evidente da decadência deste povo peninsular - é absolutamente brilhante. Mais do que podem, é forçoso que vão ao You Tube vê-lo.
Não percam!

Homem de acção, Teddy Roosevelt disse:

"I am a part of everything that I have read."
Podereis pensar que estou a expor uma dicotomia entre agir e ler (pensar). Recorde-se, porém, que, na esteira de Kant, Emerson demonstrou, entre outros, em The American Scholar, que a acção é inerente ao pensamento.

Uma cidade de sons

A propósito de uma leitura estética de Nova Iorque, escreve Andrea K. Scott em The New Yorker:

'New York is a city of sounds, not all of them soothing. An antidote to the sirens, the garbage trucks, and the unsavory cooing of pigeons has arrived on the High Line: Stephen Vitiello’s enchanting audio installation “A Bell for Every Minute,” the latest public-art offering from Creative Time. Part flâneur, part urban anthropologist, the forty-five-year-old artist—a native New Yorker, now based in Virginia—combed the five boroughs recording the ringing of bells, everywhere from Aqueduct, at the start of a race, to McSorley’s Old Ale House, at last call. Fifty-nine of them chime (or, in the case of a belly dancer’s accoutrements, jingle) at the rate of one per minute, from speakers installed in a tunnel over Fourteenth Street. (Time your trip to the top of the hour and you’ll hear all the bells ring in unison.) A map charts the sounds’ sources—Trinity Church, Gleason’s Gym, Cara’s bicycle—initiating an hour-long scavenger hunt you embark on simply by listening. Above all, the piece is a valentine; think of it as a harmonic update of E. B. White’s “Here Is New York.'

Como representar o que está para além da representação?

Uma eventual resposta para esta questão pode ser encontrada na obra do padre dominicano Kim En Joong.
Escreve-se, a propósito dos seus vitrais para a Basílica de São Julião, em Brioude (França), no site da Pastoral da Cultura:
"Estas obras de traço limpo e informal, que coabitam com vitrais tradicionais dispostos no deambulatório, iluminam e transfiguram os espaços imponentes do templo. ...
A cada hora que passa, a luz transmite sempre algo de novo – de manhã, tons de azul e de verde, à tarde uma coloração avermelhada. Podemos passar um dia na basílica e a cada hora vê-se sempre algo de diferente.E há quem refira que as cambiantes de luz são também uma oportunidade para manifestar a passagem do tempo.
O artista atribuiu a cada vitral a imagem de um profeta ou de um santo: Moisés, Elias, Isaías, Ezequiel, Jeremias, Daniel, os quatro evangelistas e os apóstolos, além, naturalmente, de São Julião.
Fugindo às representações clássicas da Bíblia e da história do cristianismo, o Fr. Kim En Joong aposta nas cores, cuja vibração, explica, deve fazer transparecer 'aquilo que nunca pôde ser representado'.
O vermelho assinala o amor trinitário, a sarça ardente, o carro de fogo de Elias, o sangue de Cristo redentor. O azul é o céu e a pureza, o convite ao infinito e à imaterialidade, além de ser a cor de Maria.
O amarelo, durante muito tempo considerado uma cor menor na história da pintura, surpreende o visitante, manifestando a alegria do Magnificat e a ascensão, ligada à ressurreição.
O verde é expressão do princípio vital, da Árvore da Vida, da natureza e do apaziguamento. E também o preto e branco, simbolizando 'o combate entre as trevas e a luz'”.

Podereis ver exemplos do seu trabalho em:
http://www.snpcultura.org/tvb_vitrais_kim_en_jooong.html