Posted on 10/18/2011 6:55:35 AM PDT by Hojczyk
The number of people participating in the Occupy Wall Street sit-ins because they are angry that their education has not yielded the fruits that they hoped it would becomes more apparent by the day. Many of the protesters I have met are understandably ruffled that they are unemployed, and they often finish their remonstrations with a non-sequitur, delivered as if it were a knockout blow: “And I went to college!” Well, one might ask, “So what?”
In the West, we are hard at work establishing a culture that fetishizes education, and instills the belief that college — regardless of its content or application — will, and should, inexorably lead to a better job, or a better life, or even a better America. Worse, that one has a right to these things. In doing so, we have created a Potemkin aristocracy, one based upon the erroneous and tragic conceit that having letters after one’s name intrinsically confers excellence. We are happily encouraging our children to join its ranks, regardless of whether there is any evidence that to do so will be in their interest. This is supremely ironic, given that so many of America’s billionaires — i.e. those who pay for more educations and create more jobs than anyone else — are college dropouts. Indeed, both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates failed to finish college. Can we say with a straight face that this has adversely affected them, or America at large?
On Thursday, I met a guy down in Zuccotti Park. He speaks six languages, but he has nothing useful to say in any of them. He is the movement’s perfect spokesman.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
I DIDN’T go to college. I went to trade school. And I make a nice six figures in IT. A BA degree would allow me to say “would you like fries with that” in a more intelligable voice, but that’s about it. Well, that and it might allow me to easily spell “intelligible” without spell checker.
Adam Smith promoted PRODUCTION
Karl Marx promoted REDISTRIBUTION
Now, after the murder of millions
Guess which is taught on campus?
— The late, great Ralph Smeed
It was hard work and didn't pay what she wanted, but it was a job and she took it.
She did her best at it, so much so that one of the better choices which wouldn't give her an interview in April called he back last week for a interview. With nearly six months of proven work history at an entry level job and an attitude which shows, they called her back on Friday with an offer which includes bennies like health insurance she didn't have with her present job. She gave them their two weeks notice yesterday.
The point is that my kid (and thousands of conservative family kids like her) did not spend her post graduation time protesting and whining that they can't get the job they "deserve." She took the first job available and used it as a stepping stone closer to the job she deserves.
FWIW, her old man did essentially the same thing back in 1981. It took me more years than it did her months to trade my first two jobs in on one I deserved.
have been educated in government run or subsidized schools designed to teach students to be conforming group-thinkers, followers, non-independent thinking socialists, believers in big nanny-state government, whiners and professional victims.
It doesn't look like there is even one independent, analytical thinker in the crowd so I would say they got the education the schools intended. And they are doing the work their puppet masters planned for them.
Credentialism. I see it all the time in my field, the longer the string of letters after ones name, they more they feel an authority on everything.
I teach at a big-brand school. This summer we had relatively extensive training devoted to hammering home the point “never give anyone the impression that getting a degree here is any sort of guarantee of getting a job.”
College education is devalued when it is too easy to get -- I got an engineering degree and I still had nightmares about it 4 years after I graduated.
If we try to pass every kid and push everyone into college, then higher education is devalued.
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