07.20.04
Posted in education at 10:49 am by
I’m passionate (read: wound up) about a great number of things. Education, though, is probably one of the most poigniant issues that I see facing the country today. After all, education is the one and only stepping stone to a successful future, right?
The answer to that last question sounds quite logical. But I’m not quite so sure. I do think that all should be afforded some degree of education. But, a college education, now this is a whole horse of a different shoe size.
I feel like our culture has so glamorized getting that coveted bachelor’s degree that students aren’t really asking themselves what they want to do with their lives. For example, a student who has a deep desire and passion for welding doesn’t need a liberal arts education…(it’s taken be a long while to think about whether or not I really mean that last phrase after I wrote it, I think I do really mean it.) Now that welder may one day for his or her own pleasure desire to become more cultured in areas of literature, history, or the arts–though as any good welder will tell you, welding can be an art form. But if I were chosing a welding candidate from one with a liberal arts degree from here, here, or here OR one with a 1-year welding certificate…let’s be honest. I’d take the welding certificate hands down.
Problem being–students in high school don’t hear that message any more. They hear, “if you don’t go to college you’ll be a miserable failure.” Nobody says it (not that bluntly at least,) but they hear it. Guidance counselors lie, “if you want to be a welder/mechanic/carpenter/farmer you’ll need at least a buisness degree so you can run the business some day.” They’re telling those students many of whom haven’t experienced a whole lot of “academic success” that they need to rack up thousands of dollars in debt so that they can get a degree and be successful. Economic principles tell us–I think correctly–that the time value of money in this case may just tell a grim story.
These students in stead of starting work on an apprenticeship (if they don’t already have a trade, which many do) and making money. Many of them make no money–in fact, most go into debt–and are marginally successful at best in academia. They climb into a hole that is impossible to climb out of…and they fight the debt demon for YEARS trying to make up for lost money, time, and energy that they spent completing a degree. Most of the special knowlege they obtain in this course of study they would have obtained naturally anyway through experience in their places of work.
All this because in our culture it is somehow beneath respectibility to be a tradeswoman. This, my friends, is a line of bullshit originating from the pit of hell.
More on the reprocussions of this push that “everyone deserves a college education” tomorrow.
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Posted in education at 10:49 am by
I’m passionate (read: wound up) about a great number of things. Education, though, is probably one of the most poigniant issues that I see facing the country today. After all, education is the one and only stepping stone to a successful future, right?
The answer to that last question sounds quite logical. But I’m not quite so sure. I do think that all should be afforded some degree of education. But, a college education, now this is a whole horse of a different shoe size.
I feel like our culture has so glamorized getting that coveted bachelor’s degree that students aren’t really asking themselves what they want to do with their lives. For example, a student who has a deep desire and passion for welding doesn’t need a liberal arts education…(it’s taken be a long while to think about whether or not I really mean that last phrase after I wrote it, I think I do really mean it.) Now that welder may one day for his or her own pleasure desire to become more cultured in areas of literature, history, or the arts–though as any good welder will tell you, welding can be an art form. But if I were chosing a welding candidate from one with a liberal arts degree from here, here, or here OR one with a 1-year welding certificate…let’s be honest. I’d take the welding certificate hands down.
Problem being–students in high school don’t hear that message any more. They hear, “if you don’t go to college you’ll be a miserable failure.” Nobody says it (not that bluntly at least,) but they hear it. Guidance counselors lie, “if you want to be a welder/mechanic/carpenter/farmer you’ll need at least a buisness degree so you can run the business some day.” They’re telling those students many of whom haven’t experienced a whole lot of “academic success” that they need to rack up thousands of dollars in debt so that they can get a degree and be successful. Economic principles tell us–I think correctly–that the time value of money in this case may just tell a grim story.
These students in stead of starting work on an apprenticeship (if they don’t already have a trade, which many do) and making money. Many of them make no money–in fact, most go into debt–and are marginally successful at best in academia. They climb into a hole that is impossible to climb out of…and they fight the debt demon for YEARS trying to make up for lost money, time, and energy that they spent completing a degree. Most of the special knowlege they obtain in this course of study they would have obtained naturally anyway through experience in their places of work.
All this because in our culture it is somehow beneath respectibility to be a tradeswoman. This, my friends, is a line of bullshit originating from the pit of hell.
More on the reprocussions of this push that “everyone deserves a college education” tomorrow.
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Zachary said,
July 20, 2004 at 7:36 pm
You make a good point, but you’re missing one very important part of this equation. Students in high school hear about college this and college that all the time, but they miss out in what really matters: what they’re learning there and now. This country doesn’t value education. We don’t pay teachers; we don’t care about facilities; we push students through the system and kick them out.
I’m as passionate (wound up) about education as the next guy, perhaps even more. And I too am worried about this push for a college education, and thumbing our noses at vocational schools. But before we get to that, we have to look at making kids want to learn. We push them through this system and they know this. They cannot wait to leave.
Perhaps we should work on that first before we worry about how best to limit a student’s college aspirations.
Just Pat said,
July 20, 2004 at 7:52 pm
“As teachers, we have even become insensitive to the ridiculous situation in which adult men and women feel that they owe us a paper of at least twenty pages. We have lost our sense of surprise when men and women who are taking courses about the questions of life and death anxiously ask us how much is required. Instead of spending a number of free years searching for the value and meaning of our human existence with the help of others who expressed their own experiences in word or writing, most students are constantly trying to earn credits, degrees and awards, willing to sacrifice even their own growth.” (Henri J. M. Nouwen; Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life; copyright 1975; pg 84, 85)
Brandon said,
July 20, 2004 at 9:10 pm
Zach, I certainly would be opposed to limiting a student’s college aspirations. I don’t think that I said that we should. I simply feel that students shouldn’t be steered toward college as the be all end all option of High School guidance counselors. That said, I totally agree with you about helping students to learn to want to learn. This needs to be a huge priority.
Brandon said,
July 20, 2004 at 9:18 pm
Thanks for the great quote, Pat. Nouwen is one of my favourites.
Zachary said,
July 20, 2004 at 10:16 pm
Brandon, I agree with you too. College should not be the key to social acceptance and college should not be seen as the crux that leads to financial security. I know of at least a dozen college graduate friends this year who are still unemployed. And for what reason did they go to college? To pay college loans.