The college degree mythThomas, you are an idiot.
For the past 20 years, we have been hearing how important a college degree is to our future. The future has now come to pass.
What good did the college degrees do for our bankers, CEOs or political captains? I have noticed that when a business fails, bank fails, someone goes to jail or a bad decision is made, the person’s college is never mentioned.
What we need in our leaders is not a college degree, . Give us a person with good common sense in the above positions, and we will be a country that will not be beat in any endeavor. Parents, save your money and teach your children some common sense.
Thomas Varacky, Grand Prairie
You're right that Americans need to display (and be taught) more common sense, but all the common sense in the world will not help you if you do not have the learning to use with that common sense. A good education for everyone, consisting of facts upon which one (and all) can build our own opinions, that is what will is required to become a country that will not be beat in any endeavor. Without that education, we wont even be able to beat the world at flipping hamburgers, and that's all we'll be good for.
9 comments:
Okay, I don't have the time right now, but a heads up, Dave, I want to lock horns with you on this one. (in the standard courteous manner, of course) The absolute need of a degree to be a success IS a myth. Total and complete myth and in many cases a complete waste of time. Nothing against attaining a higher education, but demanding letters behind the name as a prerequisite for social and/or financial advancement is a form of neo-bigotry. I'm off to solve a tech problem right now, but will be getting to you on this either tonight or on Sunday. Cheers.
Oh, you'll get no arguement from me on that account. But it's just the flip side of Thomas's comment. He calls an education a waste of money, but I say that people who act like the degree, rather than the education that accompanies it, is the most important part are disrespecting education just as much. Have you had "representatives" in your state legislature try to cap the number of hours students can take before the tuition levels increase? The given excuse is that they are trying to stop "slackers" and perpetual students from "wasting taxpayers money". But can any education really be wasted, except an education undertaken (and quickly forgotten) for the sole purpose of getting the piece of paper required to get such and such a job?
If the purpose of going to college is just to get a higher paying job, then maybe we should save ourselves some tax dollars (and students time) and set up trade schools, where people take only those classes which pertain directly to the job they seek.
But if we do that, we need to make sure that we call it what it is: learning a trade.
Education should be about more than jumping through hoops in order to get a piece of paper that says you're "qualified" to make more money at a certain job.
College certainly can be a waste of time and money, but it is the attitude of the people attending the schools that is the waste, not the schools themselves. Of all the things that I think the government ought to be spending money on, education comes second only to infrastructure as a priority (and that only because we havent kept ours up).
Two things:
(1) And old college friend told me that a degree is like stock. My father once told me that a degree is proof that you can be taught. I think there's truth in both statements.
(2) Apparently, Varacky's never seen the movie "Idoicracy."
I think Varacky most likely is also one of the folks that called Obama elitist because he has a college education and law degree.
He also probably didn't get past high school either.
First I'll say that Mr. Varacky's comments fell short, mostly due to his concentration on the notion of 'common sense' or the lack thereof. The core of his sentiment merits examination, however, this fracturing of the populace along perceptive lines. There is an oversimplification of this issue that runs rampant in both ideological camps - the 'educated' and the 'non-educated', and at the root of it is a general diminished capacity for the nuance and specificity of our language and semantics. I am stuck in the middle of these two camps in my daily life and it drives me bat-shit crazy to hear the dumb defend ignorance as well as hearing the supposedly enlightened placate themselves with pills of rhetoric and supposed wit.
There is a distinction to be made between being anti-intellectual and anti-intellect. A distinction between being anti-elitist and anti-elite. I am one of the elite in my field, it is something that everyone should aspire to in any chosen profession. I surround myself with elites in related industries as to advance professionalism in our field, to improve standards and practices on a continuing basis. Some of us have degree's, some of us don't and none of us really think about it all that much - we trade knowledge and experiences to achieve the desired result. Then an outside 'elitist' will enter the picture - one who is an elite in the field and will not speak directly to one without an almost identical resume' (a real sight to behold, one guy addressing another through a third party while standing a foot away from the first party) to theirs and who has not followed the specific prescribed method of advancement in our field. The machine of progress slows if not coming to a grinding halt because this 'elitist' and his delicately constructed ego can't get past the idea that another's experiences have rendered them equal in qualitive and quantitive expertise as the elitist who 'studied' his way to his advanced position. It's a real pain in the ass at times.
Then there's the flip side; the willful ignoramus that has the preconceived notion (usually from being treated in a dismissive manner or being told repeatedly that if one doesn't have any post-secondary educational experience at an approved institution of higher learning, well, he may as well get used to flipping burgers) that intellect is somehow the by-product of being a homosexual that has never had to swing a hammer or fix their own plumbing problems and worse, probably part of some sort of Jewish Freemason conspiracy to convince his kids that there is no God and who wants to force everyone to drink warm beer and eat stinky cheese.
But I digress...
Dave, trade schools are fantastic and there are a number of fantastic tech and trade schools all across the nation, I'd love to see more of them. My question is why is there not more of an emphasis at the High School level to place the students that would be a good fit for these trade schools into them instead of the pervasive attitude of it's a four year+ degree or nothing. "Fast food industry for you!" (in Soup Nazi voice) What role have a number of Trade Unions played in the diminishment of apprentice programs and attendance of trade schools - not all Trade Unions mind you, the Carpenters Union, Pipefitters Union and others are EXCELLENT in regards to apprenticeship programs and the creation of skilled craftsmen but there are also a number of Unions out there that are (especially in rural areas) that get into bed with management of production and process facilities that simply take the dues to channel to politicians in return for management being able to say that they are a Union shop to get contracts that they would otherwise be excluded from bidding on while the schmuck on the line is still making less than a Wal-Mart cashier and getting $30 a week yoinked from his take-home by the Union. Not very fair or worker-oriented.
Dig where I'm coming from Da-doo? Less demonizing and dismissal, less standardization based on generalizations and maybe a bit more consideration on a case-by-case basis. One size does not fit all.
Footnote. It's good to have the time to converse again, hopefully we can keep it up, my schedule is much looser than it's been in a long while. Cheers.
And Dusty needs to brush up on her grammar and syntax before taking jabs at those of us that didn't get through H.S. Your comment is a fine example of that-ee-thar intellectual bigotry that I mentioned in the first comment.
Your examples of the snooty "expert" and the angry lowbrow are both excellent examples of people who are assholes, but have nothing to do with education itself. Those two are examples of people with low self-esteem issues, who denegrate others in order to pump up their fragile egos, and is something which transcends education (or lack thereof) of all kinds.
Just say "YES! to trade schools!
If there's one major problem with American education (and there isnt, to judge by the number of times I've used this phrase)(but anyway), it's the one-size-fits-all attitude of those who run our schools and education policy.
It'd be nice to say that it's another example of egg-headed arrogance run wild, but it's a much better example of the arrogance of management thinking that, because they have the positions and make the big bucks, they know more about teaching than the actual teachers in the trenches.
Again, as is so often the case, it's not an egg-head problem, it's a leadership problem.
Things started to slip in America when the people who ran things started to be considered smarter about how things worked than the people who actually did the work. This was followed by ever greater rewards for the managers, stagnating wages for the people who actually produce something, and declining morale for everyone but a lucky few.
American productivity is the highest in the world, but I really dont think we're any happier (or better off) because of it (except the ones who get the bonuses because we work so hard for them).
I'll give you that on the asshole quotient, Dave, and I think we're pretty much on the same page as far as the end problems we face - both on the individual and systemic levels. The way I look at it is that the educated asshole is motivated by envy of that which he believes should rightly be his by degree, the idiot's envy is driven by fear of the unknown.
But the envy is driven by a lack of self-worth.
Unfortunately, I have no answer to that issue.
Nor, I think, does anyone, really.
Post a Comment