26 July 2007
Non Solius Sum!
I just interviewed a guy today who has a Master's Degree in Philosophy. I have a bachelor's (two of them) but he will be under me. His life story is remarkably similar to mine:
* Traditional Catholic
* Couldn't find work with a Philosophy degree
* short stint in Catholic schools ended when liberal principals fired him
* non-education jobs didn't work
* got in a rut
* competed with illegal immigrants for jobs like I did
* Finally got called by Walmart and is in the same position I am in.
Small world. It reminds me of one guy I knew casually in College, who got a doctorate in Theology in Rome, got married, and couldn't get a job doing anything. The degree (especially a doctorate) made him overqualified, and he didn't have recent enough experience in other stuff. So, he got a job working at McDonalds. One day, when he was handing out orders through the window, a woman turned to her daughter and said "See, that is what will happen to you if you don't go to college." True story, I'm not making it up. One might as well say that is what will happen to you if you do go to college!
This is why I wrote some time ago that you should not send your kids to college. Of course, I was speaking about the arts, not the applied sciences. Nevertheless, sooner or later we have to realize that not only is our society not tailored to provide jobs for arts majors, (i.e. Theology, history, philosophy, literature, etc.), but increasingly it is capable of providing decent jobs for those who do not go into debt between 20 and 80 thousand dollars like myself and this fellow whose education now prepares him to work at...... Walmart! Its almost like something out of the Grapes of Wrath.
Rather than make this an apologia for Distributism, I'd rather focus on something else. Our country is so obsessed with sending kids to "college" when our colleges are wastelands of non-thought. As George Orwell said in his masterpiece 1984, "It is an idea so stupid only an Academic could think of it!" People even take second mortgages on their houses so their children can get C's in remedial math courses at college. At least all my debt is on me and my parents don't have to foot the bill, just from a justice standpoint. Now, how much better off would we be if more american children were sent into trade schools and tech schools! They would make more money instead of drifting from job to job, career to career. I've already changed careers 5 times. I know others who have been in 8 or 9 different industries. On the other hand, those I know who out of high school went into some kind of blue collar work make more than I do. For that matter, they made more than I did when I was a high school teacher! Moreover, those who got their degrees in the applied sciences also tend to stay within one or two careers, because no matter what politics pilfer through, science is still science. A professor can drone on all he wants about Darwin, it still doesn't change the structure of the cell, or how cells respond to environment, medical treatment, etc. A computer professor can make all the tangents he wants into global warming, atheism, world politics, but it doesn't change the circuitry of a Pentium processor. Yet our science programs in universities are full of foreigners, who take that skill back to their own countries (because the government is only interested in letting unskilled illegal immigrants stay in the country for some inane reason). If I had at least double majored in business I could have an MBA and be in a very different position, even in this economically depressed area. But hindsight is always 20/20, as it is for my new employee. At least I have someone I can talk about Hegel's logic with.
On the other hand, it doesn't need to be for the good Catholic parent, who can make positive decisions to help their children find their way into careers without debt, by teaching them a trade, preferably from early on. Any learning in the arts can be given by good books and good priests. College simply isn't worth wasting your time on.
Posted by Athanasius at 7:09 PM
Labels: Common sense, Education