On Friday, Veritas Academy, which is run by my good friend Michael Phillips, had a graduation ceremony. Graduation is a unique event, because we are celebrating something that has happened in the past, yet it is almost always called a "Commencement" because the focus is on what it will look like in the future. There is no other event in our culture where we celebrate the past with a focus on the future.
This celebration is prevalent. My son's school has a similar ceremony this coming week. We had a little bit of a different recognition in church this morning, and I would be shocked if someone told me that they had never seen one. Every time I see a graduation, I am reminded of the line in The Incredibles where he touts over-celebration of mediocrity.
The truth is that I believe in education a great deal. I have achieved three college degrees and have done work towards another degree. With that in mind, I am aware of the tendency to over-celebrate, but if there is one thing we should reward, it is education.
Now clearly, not everyone is purposed for a college education, and I understand that. I also teach people who want to get a real estate license, and I have been in the classroom for security officer, mortgage broker, or life and health insurance licensing.
These classes are important, too. Because one thing that is essential, no matter what your chosen occupation, is you need to prepare. I have been known to tell people to never stop preparing for your future. "The longer your preparation, the greater your opportunity." So continue to follow the Proverbs 4 model of attempting to attain wisdom, no matter the area of study.
But as I take a more global view, I have noticed that in this economy, the one industry that has changed the least is education. I had a front row seat to the recent real estate market collapse. Now, there are an infinite number of factors that played into it, but among the most prevalent was mortgage money being so easily acquirable.
Marc Cuban thinks that the availability of education loans will spell the death of the industry. While I am not sure I will go that far, I am persuaded that changes need to occur. Having worked at a few school attempting to re-tool their programs, including a college, I know that these are not easy decisions to make.
While we may see the re-introduction of trade schools or some other way to re-educate people, something must (and will) happen. The government cannot continue to give away money to people in school. I know some people first-hand, who are going back to school at older ages, because it is easier than getting a job. Obviously, anything that discourages productivity must eventually take a hit.
Conceivably, education is good for the future of the economy, there are now more gaps than there have been in years between those things learned in school and those usable skills. The schools which find a way to combat the expenses for when the loan money dries up will be successful. I, for one, hope that is a great number, as I'd love to see a more educated society.
Matt,
ReplyDeleteI think you've got lots of room to go deeper in your thinking here. Could it be that some of your beliefs about education are gathered second-hand and without apt analysis from you?
Here's an example of what struck me as not only trite, but questionable:
====The truth is that I believe in education a great deal. I have achieved three college degrees and have done work towards another degree. With that in mind, I am aware of the tendency to over-celebrate, but if there is one thing we should reward, it is education.====
Why? Why should education be rewarded by "us"? Is it not supposed to be its OWN reward?
====The schools which find a way to combat the expenses for when the loan money dries up will be successful. I, for one, hope that is a great number, as I'd love to see a more educated society. ====
Going to school often has very LITTLE to do with being an educated person. Want evidence? Look at how many idiots are graduating!
Our society tends to honor:
1. A college degree.
2. A high IQ.
Neither one, however, is any indication of a person's ability to think and to operate RATIONALLY. Rational thinking is NOT a valued paradigm in our society. So at the end of the day a great many folks who pay to go to school are doing little else than to perpetuate a system that does little to help them with life. Sure, they might get HIRED because they have that otherwise-meaningless diploma, but their lives will still be miserable because they are irrational people who will suffer all the pitfalls that go along with that way of thinking.
That fact of the matter, Matt, is that the adoption of the paradigm of rationality would do more to transform our society than if everyone got 100 college degrees. So what that Billy got a certification in pest control application if his political, religious, and social beliefs and behaviors do violence to the truth, and are destructive to the society around him.
====Conceivably, education is good for the future of the economy, ====
WHOSE economy? The folks who profit from the tuition and the indoctrination of the society? Or the guy who got "educated"?
Let's see; with my bachelor's degree, I can make one dollar an hour more at McDonalds than without it. And that only cost me how many years of my life and how many tuition dollars?
Meanwhile, the same McDonalds will hire some 19-year-old who doesn't possess adequate communication skills to be a cashier and pay him practically the same as what they'd pay me. So how is "education good for the economy"?
Education is an economy unto itself, Matt. It entices those who will be satisfied with very little return from it to invest their money and time into it. And when they get out, they go about telling everyone else about the great importance of a proper education, even though they didn't learn even half of what was on the various syllabi, and they forgot half of that within five years of graduation.
What would be really great for the economy would be a grassfire of rational thinking amongst the citizens.
Jack