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I suppose I've matured a bit over the years; there was once a time when I heard about what goes on in third-world sweatshops and was shocked only by the inhumanity of it. Now I'm wondering if the whole system isn't bad for us too.
Picture, if you will, a Spanish class at my college. My class. I'm one of the few students who actually learns the language; I'd estimate about two-thirds of the class is just scraping by, memorizing vocab by rote at the last minute before a test and putting the words in order in the most halting and mechanistic fashion imaginable. I used to think that they just weren't trying, and that might be part of the answer, but part of it is (I suspect) that most of these kids just don't have much of an aptitude for language. They might have talents, but learning languages is not one of them, and this same type of student can be found in pretty much every class.
They can understand the material in a functional way, after immense effort, but never well enough to really use it. They stay quiet in class, never asking questions, just taking notes furiously and trying to slap them together in a recognizable way on the next test or essay. They scrape and stumble their way through college with passing grades...and when they get out, then what? I imagine either they do something they've been "educated" for, albeit very poorly, or else they take a general-purpose crap job. Why did they need a lengthy and expensive college education they didn't even understand?
I'm told that the vast majority of jobs in the U.S. today require a college education of some sort. I don't see why though. Your average person is not going to benefit from being inundated with the most extraordinary discoveries of Western thought, because the average person is not at all extraordinary. I don't mean to denigrate people who aren't as smart as I am (false modesty and banter aside, I know I'm pretty sharp overall), but literature, science, mathematics, philosophy--it all flies over their heads. They just aren't equipped to handle it, as far as I can tell. They might be able to recite some vague Cliff-notes synopsis of it later, but they don't engage the material. The only benefit they get from college seems to be the emotional maturing and discipline. Those they can use, but you don't need to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year to get that.
I know I'm pretty ignorant on economic matters, but I don't know that much production of tangible things gets done here. Those get outsourced overseas, where they can be done for lower wages and without the expenses incurred by obeying U.S. labor laws. So we don't actually make much of anything ourselves...what do we do then? Presumptively something more intellectual, but like I've said, not everyone has the ability to really prosper in intellectual work.
Some people, to be blunt, just aren't too clever. In terms of job skills, the main difference between some of my Spanish classmates and your typical Mexican migrant worker is that the Mexican can actually speak Spanish. This seems to apply across the board, too; Hegel, Darwin, Locke, Bernoulli, Tennyson, Adam Smith, whatever the class is teaching, it'll be wasted on about sixty percent of the students in it. A classical lib arts education can do a lot to stimulate some minds to think flexibly--I know it's helped me a lot--but for every person that benefits, there are two who don't understand and don't care. I'm sure I sound horribly snobby, but really...don't we need to have jobs available for the slower people too? You don't need to have detailed knowledge of a dozen different fields to do a specific task and do it well.
Mind you, the average Polytubbie--given our common interest here--is probably not in that class of person who can't use higher education. We're a bunch of strategy-game nerds, for crying out loud.
Picture, if you will, a Spanish class at my college. My class. I'm one of the few students who actually learns the language; I'd estimate about two-thirds of the class is just scraping by, memorizing vocab by rote at the last minute before a test and putting the words in order in the most halting and mechanistic fashion imaginable. I used to think that they just weren't trying, and that might be part of the answer, but part of it is (I suspect) that most of these kids just don't have much of an aptitude for language. They might have talents, but learning languages is not one of them, and this same type of student can be found in pretty much every class.
They can understand the material in a functional way, after immense effort, but never well enough to really use it. They stay quiet in class, never asking questions, just taking notes furiously and trying to slap them together in a recognizable way on the next test or essay. They scrape and stumble their way through college with passing grades...and when they get out, then what? I imagine either they do something they've been "educated" for, albeit very poorly, or else they take a general-purpose crap job. Why did they need a lengthy and expensive college education they didn't even understand?
I'm told that the vast majority of jobs in the U.S. today require a college education of some sort. I don't see why though. Your average person is not going to benefit from being inundated with the most extraordinary discoveries of Western thought, because the average person is not at all extraordinary. I don't mean to denigrate people who aren't as smart as I am (false modesty and banter aside, I know I'm pretty sharp overall), but literature, science, mathematics, philosophy--it all flies over their heads. They just aren't equipped to handle it, as far as I can tell. They might be able to recite some vague Cliff-notes synopsis of it later, but they don't engage the material. The only benefit they get from college seems to be the emotional maturing and discipline. Those they can use, but you don't need to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year to get that.
I know I'm pretty ignorant on economic matters, but I don't know that much production of tangible things gets done here. Those get outsourced overseas, where they can be done for lower wages and without the expenses incurred by obeying U.S. labor laws. So we don't actually make much of anything ourselves...what do we do then? Presumptively something more intellectual, but like I've said, not everyone has the ability to really prosper in intellectual work.
Some people, to be blunt, just aren't too clever. In terms of job skills, the main difference between some of my Spanish classmates and your typical Mexican migrant worker is that the Mexican can actually speak Spanish. This seems to apply across the board, too; Hegel, Darwin, Locke, Bernoulli, Tennyson, Adam Smith, whatever the class is teaching, it'll be wasted on about sixty percent of the students in it. A classical lib arts education can do a lot to stimulate some minds to think flexibly--I know it's helped me a lot--but for every person that benefits, there are two who don't understand and don't care. I'm sure I sound horribly snobby, but really...don't we need to have jobs available for the slower people too? You don't need to have detailed knowledge of a dozen different fields to do a specific task and do it well.
Mind you, the average Polytubbie--given our common interest here--is probably not in that class of person who can't use higher education. We're a bunch of strategy-game nerds, for crying out loud.
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