"Forty-five percent of people who go to college, four-year colleges, don't get a bachelor's degree within six years. Those people often have met with disappointment and their investment isn't particularly good, necessarily. Another group of people graduate from college and then have trouble getting jobs and end up taking jobs for which a college education is not really a prerequisite. Twelve percent of the mail carriers in the United States today have college degrees. And I have nothing against mail carriers with college degrees, but I don't think it's an absolute necessity to have a college degree to deliver the mail. "
Professor RICHARD VEDDER (Ohio University)
Once upon a time there was a much clearer divide between "Education" and "Training".
The former was about gaining a set of skills to help one gather information about the world in which one lived and then filter, understand, and act upon that information. The latter about gaining very specific skills necessary to do a particular task or set of tasks.
While the two were considered in many ways equally important, they were not confused for each other.
There was a time when an education was something you took. It was a right. A human right. Whereas training was something you were given. It was bestowed upon you.
The purpose of training was to help you get or keep a job.
The purpose of education was so that you could be a fully participating citizen, of the world, not just the little piece of it where you happened to have been born, happened to be living.
There was also a time when Universities while considered Foci of education, were not thought of as the sole repositories of same. There were many who had no formal schooling at all. Yet they took great pride in being educated, even if it was self-education. They read voraciously, engaged in lively intellectual debate with others. And while this was greatly satisfying to them, they conceived of something more for their children.
So they worked and fought to see a formal education transformed from something only for the scions of the privileged, to a basic human right available to all.
But as happens all to often the seductive serpent of Radical Capitalism slithered into what should have been the grounds of Eden and turned it into a kind of hell.
Bit by bit a poison has spread in the veins of our ambitions. We have been encouraged to view everything through a horribly distorted lens. A lens called, "But how does this get me paid."
Everything has been reduced to the lowest common denominator of cold hard cash.
If an "education" does not result in one getting a job, securing one's economic future, then clearly it must be a waste of time has become the conventional wisdom.
Those who go to school without a clear plan of how what they are studying will result in a big payday at some point are viewed as frivolous.
We have been taught that the subtler, intangible values of what was once called a "classic" education, are meaningless if they can not result in a bigger house, a better car, in short if they do not result in having more things.
This is why they have tried so hard to make everything about passing standardized tests and we treat teachers as if they were doing a job no more complicated than collecting the trash, and infinitely less valuable.
Modern life has become much like being on a long conveyor belt, the end of which dumps us into a charnel pit. No matter how much we might struggle there seems to be no getting off, no avoiding the terrible fate we've seen all the ones before us consigned to. Or at least this is what we've been told by the ones operating the conveyor. At one point along they way there is a door marked "EXIT". However when we inquire about what lies behind that door, we are told, "Oh you don't want to go through that door. You'll never get to the end of the conveyor if you do."
But here's the secret they are keeping from you. That conveyor belt? It only seems like it's moving. In truth you only get to the pit if you choose to walk forward all the way to the end. And that door, the one marked "EXIT"? It's not closed, in fact it's wide open, and a lot easier to reach then they would have you believe. You only need to find the courage to walk through it. Once you do you'll be in a whole new place. It has its own challenges and dangers but the rewards are far greater than anything that conveyor belt you left behind has to offer.
Keep The Faith My Brothers And Sisters!
The following resources were used in the creation of this article:
From TechCrunch: We’re in a Bubble and It’s Not the Internet. It’s Higher Education.
From Chris Hedges at Truthout: Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System
From Tell Me More on NPR: Is A College Education Worth The Debt?