Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Too much of a good thing

"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing." -- Karl Rove

Unsurprisingly, the Wall Street editorial board agrees, once again, with the evil genius of the Bush Administration. In the latest opinion article, "For Most People,
College Is a Waste of Time" (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121858688764535107.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular), they argue that the only thing people need is professional training, evaluated by trade exams - not education.

Training teaches skills, which can be used to work for Rupert Murdoch. Education teaches people how to think for themselves. Educated people, as Rove correctly observed, usually do not vote Republican...

Judging from the URL, this crap is in the "Most Popular" category, which is sad, but, again, not surprising. I assume that people who read WSJ Opinion page are the same people who get their information from Faux News.

6 comments:

Georgii Kalnytskyi said...

Fully agree with you.

NS said...

Well, people (used to) read WSJ for news. Their opinion page is a collective case of rabies.

Илья Казначеев said...

"For Most People,
College Is a Waste of Time"
You know what?
Our "government people" think exactly that, too.

Makes it an interesting tendency, I guess.

Anonymous said...

I think you read that wrongly.

What they want is people who can perform, not people who can think about other people performing and people who can talk about that.

Of course, somebody has to run the circus and not all of them can be clowns, but it is safer to study how to be a clown rather than how to run a circus, because there are so many more clowns employed than circus managers.

On the other hand circus managers get an awful lot more money and that is why people don't wnat to get into vocational training. At least in some countries.

Developed nations are developed because people knew how to do stuff, they ere self employed, they patented their ideas and then they invented cars, radios, etc.

In other countries where people simply wanted to run businesses, they simply still run circuses and banana plantations. Sad but true.

If you want your country to succeed, better to get people to learn genomics or whatever new science appears and then let people be self employed (a good way would be for people to pay less taxes if they are self employed).

Also the most advanced countries have free education from day care up to the doctorate degree. That really makes a difference.

Countries like Singapur value teachers more than any other profession.

The important thing is for peopl eto study, but to study things that will make them money. That's the whole difference between countries that are rich and countries that are condemned to be poor.

samantha said...

Much of college as currently implemented is a waste of time. Too much especially of the undergraduate curriculum is an extended kindergarten geared to making 18 year olds "well-rounded" and giving them and an acceptablity stamp while not really teaching them a hell of a lot about anything rather than patience, getting the grade and going massively in debt (or indebting their parents) for the privilege. If you go to college later, are generally as well rounded as you wish to be, and know what you want to learn, the process totally works against you. Graduate school has too many places to languish indefinitely to get the next piece of paper while providing cheap labor for the university.

Anonymous said...

Since capitalism and globalization have really become great legal ponzi schemes, there is no need for more that 5 percent of the participants to be able to think. And that is probably too many.

It is far better for those running the pyramids to keep the rabble in the lower sections unaware of what is going on. People who can think and reason are dangerous. They are disruptive and incite others to question their surroundings and circumstances. Far better for the wealth aggregators to keep these folks satisfied in their roles as cogs.