So widespread is the abject evil of the idea that an education is about getting a job, that I told my daughters I would punish them if they enrolled in college with a view to employment. An education is a terrible thing to waste on a job. Education comes from the Latin ex+ducere "to lead out," presumably from darkness into the light. I will never know how education became the means to become a wage slave and lifelong organ harvest subject (employers do take your heart and guts and lungs and spleen and so on) and in some cases people are zombified having traded away their very souls. But this is not for my daughters. The point of an education is to be enlightened, not to be trapped for life.
One of my daughters defied me (house rules: you can defy me, but never lie to me) by getting an AA in fashion from a community college before she finished high school, technically meeting my requirements while obviously breaking the rules. The punishment is in abeyance until I can get my head around actions by a kid who is smarter than I am.
Otherwise, my threats have paid off: my eldest is a religious studies major, the middle is a classics scholar, and the youngest, God bless her, is an English major. None owe a dime in students loans (like me), all are on track in (or graduated from) better Universities and each has more job offers than they can stand. Their father may be a neanderthal, but he knows the point of an education.
Other parents ask me what my kids plan to do with their putatively risible educations, and my reply is always "be happy." They do not like this answer.
Other kids graduate and look forward... umm.. working for nothing. Here are words from a security expert:
The employment prospects for recent college graduates today remain, on the whole, pretty bleak. And while some firms predict an uptick in the near future, that has yet to materialize. Youth unemployment in American isalmost as high as it is in the Middle East, where unemployment sparked revolutions last year. Beltway dysfunction could use young blood to break the hold of the entrenched interests, but there are ever-increasing barriers of entry for new applicants.
Wait. Because kids cannot get government jobs they'll be rioting in the streets? Maybe this is why the state need 5 illegal bullets for every American. This is one way to solve unemployment. As Stalin said: no man, no problem. Maybe half will be given government jobs that entail shooting the other half.
In any event the author notes that in some industries, employers depend on unpaid interns to stay alive. "Some?" Name an industry that does not. And this problem is not new, it is so old legislation has been passed to forbid it, except for lawyers and politicians. But the writer makes a good observation:
there are a huge number of eager, ambitious young people all scrambling to get a very small number of jobs. While understandable, the result is a class system where those wealthy enough to afford to live without income in an expensive city (and Washington is an expensive city by any definition) get experience and access to jobs. Young people in the middle class or from more modest backgrounds are shut out – the economics simply don’t work.
Yes, Joe Biden's wife pulls down $80k per year as a community college english "professor" while people who wish to teach are working for a few thousand a year as adjuncts. She calls herself doctor, but a "doctor in education" takes exactly 2 courses beyond a masters to earn. Most people who earn a DE have not the temerity to call themselves "doctor."
Still, the internization of America’s college graduates should prompt us to ask: If going to college doesn’t improve your job prospects, why bother going?
Believing college is to improve job prospects is the problem.
And what does it mean when access to government jobs is increasingly limited only to those applicants who can count on their families for financial support?
There you go, and the real world the ideal is government jobs, of course.
We don’t have the answers to that question. Not yet, at least. But the growing inequality of American workers – white and blue collar – is deeply troubling.
What do you mean "we"? If YOU are ignorant, then we all must be? If your frame of reference is so narrow that college is about work, so you can be soul & organ-harvested, and the only real job is a government job, then of course you have no answers. The reason you are a "fellow" at a think tank is because you have no answers. The reason you have soap box rights on NPR is because you have no answers.
There are answers, and they are being effected, but there is no way they will ever enter your field of vision.
Self-employment. No government necessary. There is the revolution in a nutshell.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
One of my daughters defied me (house rules: you can defy me, but never lie to me) by getting an AA in fashion from a community college before she finished high school, technically meeting my requirements while obviously breaking the rules. The punishment is in abeyance until I can get my head around actions by a kid who is smarter than I am.
Otherwise, my threats have paid off: my eldest is a religious studies major, the middle is a classics scholar, and the youngest, God bless her, is an English major. None owe a dime in students loans (like me), all are on track in (or graduated from) better Universities and each has more job offers than they can stand. Their father may be a neanderthal, but he knows the point of an education.
Other parents ask me what my kids plan to do with their putatively risible educations, and my reply is always "be happy." They do not like this answer.
Other kids graduate and look forward... umm.. working for nothing. Here are words from a security expert:
The employment prospects for recent college graduates today remain, on the whole, pretty bleak. And while some firms predict an uptick in the near future, that has yet to materialize. Youth unemployment in American isalmost as high as it is in the Middle East, where unemployment sparked revolutions last year. Beltway dysfunction could use young blood to break the hold of the entrenched interests, but there are ever-increasing barriers of entry for new applicants.
Wait. Because kids cannot get government jobs they'll be rioting in the streets? Maybe this is why the state need 5 illegal bullets for every American. This is one way to solve unemployment. As Stalin said: no man, no problem. Maybe half will be given government jobs that entail shooting the other half.
In any event the author notes that in some industries, employers depend on unpaid interns to stay alive. "Some?" Name an industry that does not. And this problem is not new, it is so old legislation has been passed to forbid it, except for lawyers and politicians. But the writer makes a good observation:
there are a huge number of eager, ambitious young people all scrambling to get a very small number of jobs. While understandable, the result is a class system where those wealthy enough to afford to live without income in an expensive city (and Washington is an expensive city by any definition) get experience and access to jobs. Young people in the middle class or from more modest backgrounds are shut out – the economics simply don’t work.
Yes, Joe Biden's wife pulls down $80k per year as a community college english "professor" while people who wish to teach are working for a few thousand a year as adjuncts. She calls herself doctor, but a "doctor in education" takes exactly 2 courses beyond a masters to earn. Most people who earn a DE have not the temerity to call themselves "doctor."
Still, the internization of America’s college graduates should prompt us to ask: If going to college doesn’t improve your job prospects, why bother going?
Believing college is to improve job prospects is the problem.
And what does it mean when access to government jobs is increasingly limited only to those applicants who can count on their families for financial support?
There you go, and the real world the ideal is government jobs, of course.
We don’t have the answers to that question. Not yet, at least. But the growing inequality of American workers – white and blue collar – is deeply troubling.
What do you mean "we"? If YOU are ignorant, then we all must be? If your frame of reference is so narrow that college is about work, so you can be soul & organ-harvested, and the only real job is a government job, then of course you have no answers. The reason you are a "fellow" at a think tank is because you have no answers. The reason you have soap box rights on NPR is because you have no answers.
There are answers, and they are being effected, but there is no way they will ever enter your field of vision.
Self-employment. No government necessary. There is the revolution in a nutshell.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
2 comments:
Jon i think a follow up to " None owe a dime in students loans (like me), all are on track in (or graduated from) better Universities and each has more job offers than they can stand." Should get a full post on here. That is quite an accomplishment and would like to learn more.
Thank you for this blog and the wisdom that is in it.
Well, I am not sure there is much to say except, first homeschool your kids. Then you know you are not stuck in a false dilemma: bad schools or worse. Then, knowing you have options, you always plot out what is best.
I will say, as an aside, if you kid has a gift for languages, the Universities have classics programs (Greek and Latin) extremely well endowed and few applicants. Because I homeschooled and gave the kids a well rounded ed, we spotted the language talent, and one thing led to a full ride scholarship plus.
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