One of the sad and dangerous signs of our times is how many people are enthralled by words, without bothering to look at the realities behind those words.
One of those words that many people seldom look behind is “education.” But education can cover anything from courses on nuclear physics to courses on baton twirling.
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Unfortunately, an increasing proportion of American education, whether in K–12 schools or in colleges and universities, is closer to the baton-twirling end of the spectrum than toward the nuclear-physics end. Even reputable colleges are increasingly teaching things that students should have learned in high school.
We don’t have a backlog of serious students trying to take serious courses. If you look at the fields in which American students specialize in colleges and universities, those fields are heavily weighted toward the soft end of the spectrum.
When it comes to postgraduate study in tough fields such as math and science, you often find foreign students at American universities receiving more of those degrees than do Americans.
A recent headline in the Chronicle of Higher Education said: “Master’s in English: Will Mow Lawns.” It featured a man with that degree who has gone into the landscaping business because there is no great demand for people with master’s degrees in English.
Too many of the people coming out of even our most prestigious academic institutions graduate with neither the skills to be economically productive nor the intellectual development to make them discerning citizens and voters.
Students can graduate from some of the most prestigious institutions in the country without ever learning anything about science, mathematics, economics, or anything else that would make them either productive contributors to the economy or informed voters who can see through political rhetoric.
On the contrary, people with such “education” are often more susceptible to demagoguery than the population at large. Nor is this a situation peculiar to America. In countries around the world, people with degrees in soft subjects have been sources of political unrest, instability, and even mass violence.
Nor is this a new phenomenon. A scholarly history of 19th-century Prague referred to “the well-educated but underemployed” Czech young men who promoted ethnic polarization there — a polarization that not only continued but escalated in the 20th century to produce bitter tragedies for both Czechs and Germans.
In other central European countries, between the two world wars, a rising class of newly educated young people bitterly resented having to compete with better qualified Jews in the universities and with Jews already established in business and the professions. Anti-Semitic policies and violence were the result.
It was much the same story in Asia, where successful minorities such as the Chinese in Malaysia were resented by newly educated Malays without either the educational or business skills to compete with them. These Malaysians demanded — and got — heavily discriminatory laws and policies against the Chinese.
Similar situations developed at various times in Nigeria, Romania, Sri Lanka, Hungary, and India, among other places.
Many Third World countries have turned out so many people with diplomas — but without meaningful skills — that “the educated unemployed” became a cliché among people who study such countries. This has not only become a personal problem for those individuals who have been educated, or half-educated, without acquiring any ability to fulfill their rising expectations, it has become a major economic and political problem for these countries.
Such people have proven to be ideal targets for demagogues promoting polarization and strife. We in the United States are still in the early stages of that process. But you need only visit campuses where whole departments feature soft courses preaching a sense of victimhood and resentment, and see the consequences in racial and ethnic polarization on campus.
There are too many other soft courses that allow students to spend years in college without becoming educated in any real sense.
We don’t need more government “investment” to produce more of such “education.” Lofty words such as “investment” should not blind us to the ugly reality of political pork-barrel spending.
I personally think the differences in academic success and success in general have to do more with effort than natural intelligence. Most people, except a relatively small number of actually unfortunate people, can do just fine a most fields if they are willing to work hard enough, long enough and receive support from others to achieve.
You and Seahawk -- is this part of the conservative mindset? That we're generally all perfectly capable of what might be called a core quantum of reasoning activity required not to end up in really big trouble -- it's just that some of us put in enough effort and the rest don't?
I would hope most human beings were capable of a "core quantum of reasoning activity", though the amount of trouble that might protect us from would probably vary by environment. People might well have what it takes to stay out of trouble in general in times up to the 19th century (for example) but have difficulty with the kinds of trouble now available (e.g. the relative accessibility of everyone through the Internet).
Also, being a software engineer is no guarantee of success or happiness. I have worked much of my life as a software engineer.
I'm curious whether your remark about half of America being "below average" was a rendition of a statistical fact (in which case, "below the mean for American IQ scores" would be more accurate) or whether you actually believe Americans are statistically stupider than human beings in general. If the latter, do you have a link to a study (I don't plan to read it, just curious) or is this just a personal impression?
I don't really view my thoughts on this subject as conservative or liberal. I have actually viewed things this way since I was probably in grade school watching those that get good grades and those that do not. A few really do struggle. Most do just fine with effort and encouragement from others.
I think you could probably apply this principle in a conservative or liberal argument. All I am really saying is that most people are very capable, probably more capable than they or perhaps others believe.
I don't profess to know (or care) who among us is "capable" or not. I just find it humorous that you've somehow determined that half of us are dimwits unworthy/incapable of becoming "software engineers". Software engineers? Comical.
For once Mike B made a great point. We don't need to spend vast amounts of money on programs to push all students toward college degrees. Many of those students are excellent candidates for very productive careers in manual or craft pursuits.
A guy with a natural ability to figure out mazes and puzzles may make a better electrician than a math professor, but our education system doesn't deal with him until much too much time and money has been spent pushing him in the wrong direction.
Whether we keep with government schools, or adopt a higher quality, privatized approach, we need to recognize students' abilities early on, and concentrate on their strengths instead of their deficiencies.
I agree with Mike B. Intelligence follows a bell curve. I don't know if fully half of all America is below-average, but it's close.
Moreover, his point is we are wasting money mis-matching students with degrees. "Software Engineers" is merely his rhetorical example. His point is we don't need an entire workforce toting college degrees, and pursuing that end will only dumb-down the whole thing.
How else do we explain the army of public school teachers who can't write an intelligent sentence, or narrow college professors who mindlessly recite the one-sided, highly opinionated drivel they call teaching?
1. I consider the people who comment on NRO to be well above average. I invite you to look at the website of a newspaper serving a small city of, say, 200,000 people, and read some of the reader comments to articles posted there.
2. I was just speaking statistically and colloquially. "Half of all people are by definition in the bottom half."
3. I consider software engineers to be pretty darn smart in general.
4. Perhaps it's because I grew up in slums that I don't consider the average kid in my fourth grade class to be capable of becoming a software engineer.
5. I believe Rimfrel's absolutely right about the package of intellectual tools required for 19th Century survival versus what it takes today, although I am not sure Rimfrel meant it that way. We used to have lots of good-paying jobs for people who used their bodies and hands more than their minds. Such is no longer the case.
6. So where I am coming from is: I fret about good people, hard working people, people who get C's in elementary school, graduate high school, and are well suited for turning lathes but nothing much more intellectually challenging, in a country where there are no more lathe turning jobs.
You say: "All I am really saying is that most people are very capable, probably more capable than they or perhaps others believe."
Right on the money! Everyone has unique capabilities; some quite different from others. No one should be regarded as deficient just because (s)he has below-average intelligence.
This reminds me of the often used line about 'better educated' voters tending to vote Democrat. Of course educrats and the indoctrinated college kids tilt left. This doesn't mean they are any smarter, just that they want more taxpayer funding.
Just like no plan can survive the first contact with the enemy, no amount of education can survive the first contact with reality. Many educated people can write papers, books and have many opinions, but never have a need to validate assumptions against reality. They will feel good about it without having to accept that they are actually stuck in dangerous and damaging ideals. The software engineer, the businessman, the physician and even the carpenter can have any idea they might wish to have, but reality will punish them the moment they try to implement it if it happens to go against the laws of nature. That English master's guy, he will learn a lot deal more about life in a lawn mowing business than teaching college and writing papers.
Software engineers are usually employable and not a drain on society, unlike English majors (pace Garrison Keillor). Mike B's dismIssive remarks are consistent with attitudes I have observed from my humanist friends and colleagues on and off over a 50 year career as a teacher and researcher in several engineering departments in universities and research laboratories. However most of my liberal-arts-educated friends don't really consider engineers as educated, merely "trained".
I earned my degree in Construction Management. When I was in college about 20 years ago, I remember the professors telling us that we would be faced with a diminshed/disappearing labor force and a dynamic would at some point flip. At some point in the future, a master plumber would be so valuable that he could charge hourly rates that lawyers could only dream of charging. Always thought that was funny....until it became clear that it was coming true. Attention Liberal Arts students: better get water heater insurance.
Excellent discussion by Mr. Sowell, as well as these comments.
Very succinct was the take-down of the newly-educated, all over the globe, over the last 100 years. It appears that education has not been sufficient to overcome some human frailties such as jealousy, pride or temptation. How many times have we heard "all THEY need is education"?
Not mentioned, but a factor, is how Education has become a bit of a religion itself, with the teachers and professors annointed as higher priests. We "believe" that education will cure about anything; we send gobs of money to the cause, hoping it does our kids some good. We have almost no standards with which to judge, nor guidance to give. (Well, I do, but I have many unsolicited opinions). I chuckle that we ask the uneducated student-candidate what THEY want to study. "Be what YOU want to be!" In my era, we all became photographers as a response. Poor ones, too. Luckily, we didn't try to support ourselves with that self-indulgence, most of us got real jobs. Then bought nicer cameras with which to take poor photos.
The value of higher education is an old debate, and points directly to the intentions of education itself. Mr. Sowell is, quite reasonably, asserting that an admirable goal is to prepare the person for economically productive, responsible participation in a free society (I summarize unfairly). I would like to see some thoughts on exactly how that may be accomplished, and this implicates both grade shcools and higher learning.
We are really talking about preparing citizens, are we not?
Let's also not forget that the "productive citizen" begins with some base set of habits and responses that lead him to honesty, discipline, and therefore learning. Many grade shcool teachers will lament the "home environment" that does not support their attempts at teaching, and they, too, have a point. So the first few years, even before we hand them off to Teacher #1, is critical. Any perfect parents out there?
My optimistic alter-ego believes that some innovator will indeed figure out what training really works to prepare a citizen, and start selling it, and show the results. Mr. Sowell has offered quite a bit of light in the darkness here.
Many thanks again, to Mr. Sowell, and all of you contributors.
I'm not an advocate for everyone getting a college degree -- far from it. I happen to think that the quality and importance of college education is greatly overvalued in our society today (my own experiences seem to confirm this). I tend to think we'll begin to see trade schools and the like make a comeback in the near future. What I find comical though, are sweeping, presumptive statements like the one MikeB made. We're not all geniuses, but generally speaking, most people can find their way. Trial and error. Problem is, decades of counterprodcutive government meddling, manipulation and incentives have made navigating one's way much more difficult, complicated and frustrating. It is our current president who wishes to see that "everyone" goes to college and who wants the fedeal governement to be the sole provider of college student loans. I would hope you agree that it is this type of "meddling" that is exacerbating the problem.
