Comment Of The Month

This was linked by the Blogfather a while ago and I had meant to highlight it at the time. I forgot about it until I was clearing out my bookmarks and stumbled across it.

I don't get tired of talking about this. My grandfather quit high school, joined the Army Air Force, fought in the Pacific theater in WWII, came home, married his high school sweetheart, and got his high school diploma. He didn't go to college. He could read, write, and do figures, though I doubt he knew anything about Foucault, or ever paid a grad student $500 to write a 10-page essay about it. He joined a large company, which quickly figured out he was intelligent, and they moved him into a clerk position. His wife never worked. He sired five children, all boys, bought a nice house in a small town, took vacation at a lake house, retired, moved to Florida, lived another 15 years, and died just shy of his 80th birthday of colon cancer.

Today, his job title instead of Clerk would be something like Managing Purchasing Coordinator. He would have a Master's degree in nothing in particular, probably from nowhere important, and have $50,000+ in student loans. His job today requires reading, writing, and doing figures, just like it did 50 years ago, but today he would have crippling student loans and 6 years of layaboutry.

Sometime during the last 50 years, our society went Full Retard about schooling. I've yet to see anyone explain why.

Be sure to read the article that this comment is responding to.