Higher Education Conformity
May 3rd, 2007Via: Alternet:
My theory is that employers prefer college grads because they see a college degree chiefly as mark of one’s ability to obey and conform. Whatever else you learn in college, you learn to sit still for long periods while appearing to be awake. And whatever else you do in a white collar job, most of the time you’ll be sitting and feigning attention. Sitting still for hours on end — whether in library carrels or office cubicles — does not come naturally to humans. It must be learned — although no college has yet been honest enough to offer a degree in seat-warming.
Or maybe what attracts employers to college grads is the scent of desperation. Unless your parents are rich and doting, you will walk away from commencement with a debt averaging $20,000 and no health insurance. Employers can safely bet that you will not be a trouble-maker, a whistle-blower or any other form of non-“team-player.” You will do anything. You will grovel.
Research Credit: Life After the Oil Crash
Here’s a more humorous, yet insightful look at the same idea:
http://weblog.raganwald.com/2005/07/why-you-need-degree-to-work-for-bigco.html
Read John Taylor Gatto’s stuff, free online. We are still coming down from Dewey’s 1920’s reformulation of the Prussian model designed for corporate America.
Only problem is, what corporate America thought was good for it, is turning out to no longer be good for it.
Seriously.
The new trend in education is to give it away.
Yale is giving its stuff away online.
Gatto talks about how you can give yourself an education by home-schooling from a university curriculum.
Schools in New England are doing experiments that give pupils more freedom to learn.
Keep in mind, states like California, Illinois, and New York are socialist hells that do not necessarily reflect the rest of the country. Actually, let me amend that to the megalopolises contained within each of those states.
But, consider the challenges of bringing together hundreds of cultures into one city. L.A. is a real melting-pot / salad bowl.
You have to engage in some social engineering to keep all these people from killing each other.
As for college, my take was, you get what you put into it. They tempt you in all kinds of ways. Your job is to avoid temptation.
Unfortunately, to paraphrase Shakespeare, the ages of 16-23 are mostly about drinking, fighting, stealing, and “getting wenches with child,” so that’s all most kids do. The Universities happily accept their money, use it to subsidize the studies of their more talented students, often those from other countries, while at the same time using programs to curb these students’ worse excesses.
I thought that my generation was hedonistic, but then I met alumni from the 80’s and they were complete and total animals, when they were in school, that is. They all have respectable jobs now.
But you always have a choice. They don’t necessarily advertise all of your choices, but if you show a little initiative, you find that you are rewarded. See, they don’t always want people back-stabbing and competing for the prime spots, so they don’t advertise them.
The best spots you can make are the ones you find for yourself.
//MOD George, I need to start making sure comments are on topic. Thanks, Kevin
Fight!!
http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=cryptogon.com&word2=lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
I felt the young rebel that remains within me say YESS when I read this story. Only took me until I was 33 to get an undergraduate degree, and then a few more to get a Master’s in Science. Oh yeah, it was great learning Calculus with mega geeks HALF MY AGE. Right.
My nephew’s are now struggling with WHY DO I HAVE TO DO THIS? I have considered sending them stuff by Kunstler re why even bother with the degree?
One nephew is doing quite well without. Got to work on the other.
Maybe all of the loan debt, fraud in lending etc. will give those considering the higher education circus pause. I always hoped to find another way to find out what I wanted to be when I grew up outside of college, and in many ways I did.
Its not such a bad thing to be a dropout!!!
College is simply 4 (or more) additional years of jumping through flaming hoops for no real reason, other than to show you can jump through flaming hoops. Most grads I know agree.
While I can’t say enough about lifelong learning, the way college is presented as a must for having a career is a bit of a scam. The most financially successful people at my 20 year high school reunion were:
1. A guy who dropped out in 10th grade, never got a GED, and ran his own highly lucrative plumbing business
2. A guy who was always half asleep in class, never did very well gradewise, and became an engineer on a crab fishing boat in Alaska
4 of the most closed-minded individuals I’ve encountered in my life: The 4 people at my workplace who have earned masters degrees.