You can get a degree in baloney

FtB reader Adam Shelton alerted me to some excellent opportunities for continuing education being offered by the Toronto District School Board.

Everything You Want to Know About Ghosts but Afraid to Ask – 46559
Think your house is haunted? Felt a cold shiver? Find out how to clean and protect your house, work, cottage, and body from unwanted spirits. Learn how to identify what’s real and when it’s just your imagination. Get your questions answered by professional rescue medium Dawn Trewin. Fun exercises, learning hand outs, and more! (optional fee $25)

So much more below the fold.

Ghost Tour-Toronto – 46026
Learn about ghosts and hauntings, and get hands-on experience searching them out! We will spend two hours of in-class study on what ghosts could be and how to investigate of a haunting. Learn how to do background research and a psychological profile of the spirit, then test your theories at some of the GTA’s legendary haunted sites. A full Saturday of investigation includes a visit to three sites, each with guided access and research tips. Bring a lunch! With any luck, we will even meet the real thing! (material costs: Bus transportation charges approximately $15-22. Site visit charges approximately $10-27. Please be prepare to pay in cash only on the 1st class.)

How Intuition Works – 45855
Learn how intuition works, how you can cultivate it, what handy applications it can have to everyday life and surprise yourself with an in-class intuitive experience! Q&A and future learning resources to follow.

Making Stuff Happen – 45863
Discover the principles and the energy source behind creating what you want in your life. Learn why sometimes you seem to pull something out of thin air and why sometimes no matter how hard you try, you remain empty handed. (materials costs: $20 – optional)

How strange that all of these courses can be fully covered in one lesson compared to the usual 11 week schedule of normal courses! Of course, there are also the usual woo-type wellness courses (reiki, healing meditation, holistic empowerment, etc).

I guess this isn’t much compared to the shenanigans that go on with education down in the USA sometimes but it’s enough to make me feel less jealous (? I may have issues). Though we do have the whole lame separate schools thing up here, I suppose…

-Adam

Yeah. When I read this, all I could manage to come up with as a rebuttal was a Futurama quote. “You’ve got a degree in baloney!” It’s only a shame that they don’t offer these things by distance education (e.g. by astral projection), or I might partake in one or many of these. Especially after taking that The Secret thing and intending myself into enough wealth to get more degrees in baloney.

Another choice pick I found in the offerings:

Exploring Healing Energies
The human body has an energy field which operates at a very subtle level. Disruptions or blocks in the flow of the body’s energy field occur during illness. Restoring the smooth flow of energy activates the body’s natural ability to heal itself. An understanding of the principles of working with subtle energy can facilitate healing. Learn to sense and assess energy flow and to remove energy blocks. Acquire techniques for accessing and channeling healing energy.

And if none of the abovementioned courses interest you, there’s always reflexology, or perhaps shamanism! So many choices!

Of course, if you can’t afford any of these, you could always take a course in Quantum Jumping elsewhere, then simply jump to all the versions of yourself in alternate universes that actually got degrees in all this baloney.

Sometimes, at night, I weep for humanity. I wonder if there’s a course for that.

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You can get a degree in baloney
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15 thoughts on “You can get a degree in baloney

  1. 4

    First, @TylerD: Fuck yourself with a suitably frozen instrument of your choice. (I dunno, maybe Jason has a chest full of them around here somewhere.)

    Now that that’s out of the way…

    I don’t think of these “continuing education” things as really provided by the school board. The way it works is that the school board rents out rooms in the schools to basically anyone who can write up a course plan. The instructors pay the school board and pocket the rest of the fees. The actual course content isn’t approved by the school board except in a very basic way, afaik (i.e. nothing illegal).

  2. 5

    Bit of a segue, but speaking of ghosts, The Old Cemeteries Society in Victoria B.C. does some great tours. http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/psp/html/reports/history/index.htm

    I heard an interesting story at one that I’m trying to back up with searches now, but not finding anything. Cecilia Helmcken is buried in Pioneer Square, along with her three children who pre-deceased her. Supposedly the DoB of the first two children, listed on the marker, are less than nine months apart. The reason is that the birth date of the first child was pushed later, to be nine months after John and Cecelia were married. John the founder of the British Columbia Medical Association, so was in a position to pull a few favors.

  3. 7

    On one hand, a lot of “____ studies” classes are postmodernist train-wrecks. They are deserving of scorn. On the other hand, a number of them amount to courses in history. They are no more “irrelevant” or “made-up” than other history courses.

    Instructors should just call the latter history courses and take care to distinguish them from sloppy, hypocritical and counterproductively incendiary “____ studies” courses. This would do the good work of lessening the influence of those on the I’m-angrily-not-on-the-political-correctness-bandwagon bandwagon that’s been politically correct since 1995. After all, the criticisms leveled against “women’s studies” and “ethnic studies” by those folks are equally sloppy, hypocritical and counterproductively incendiary.

  4. 8

    I have no problem with objectively teaching the history of black Americans or women, any more than I have a problem teaching objective Western Civilization courses.

    But a lot of “_____ studies” courses are the equivalent of teaching White Nationalist nonsense under the guise of teaching the history of Western Civilization. They exclusively teach their courses from a Cultural Marxist/New Left viewpoint, which amounts to political propaganda rather than scholarship.

  5. 9

    But a lot of “_____ studies” courses are the equivalent of teaching White Nationalist nonsense under the guise of teaching the history of Western Civilization. They exclusively teach their courses from a Cultural Marxist/New Left viewpoint, which amounts to political propaganda rather than scholarship.

    I am not sure where in my comment I didn’t make it clear that I agree with you on this. The type of “___ studies” courses you are alluding to here are the type I categorize as “postmodernist train-wrecks”.

  6. 10

    TylerD, I will add that I disagree with you that the whole of “___ studies” can be summarily dismissed as baloney. Moreover, I don’t think that any history course can be taught objectively. However, this doesn’t make it any less true that many “___ studies” courses amount to political propaganda instead of scholarship.

  7. 12

    Pardon me for being literal minded, but the title of this post is false. I presume Jason is merely using hyperbole, but no, the TDSB is not offering a degree (B.S.)? in these baloney courses.

    I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the ghost buster and chakra courses do not count towards a high school Diploma either, that being the highest academic recognition the School Board can award.

  8. 13

    Correct. These are just self-interest classes and don’t give credit. I think he just made the “degree in baloney” statement to make an obscure Futurama reference, which I believe is one of the noblest pursuits (along with making obscure 30 Rock references).

    In the end, this is mostly just about some fun “courses” that might make someone want to go to there. No outrage required. But personally, I’d rather take one of their cake-making classes. Then I at least end up with something tangible and delicious.

  9. 14

    You’re right Adam, I started with the Futurama quote (the first thing I thought when I read the courses) and worked backward from there.

    However, I do think that in providing the registration services for these courses (for the fee of whatever it cost to get your course listed in the directory), that makes the school board complicit in this nonsense. The “course” that amounts to a ghost tour, though, is more like a local historical tour with a ghost theme.

  10. 15

    Light bulb.

    Sure hope Futurama doesn’t count as essential Canuckism. If it does, I’m going to have to change my ‘nym to Lousier Canuck because I pretty much don’t do any of those defining activities in Jason’s banner.

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