Wings Over the Pyre - The Proper Understanding of University

05:26 am - The Proper Understanding of University

Technorati Tags: education, college, trade_school, university

I swear, Tim Blair occasionally reaches right into my hind-brain and pulls out a bonne mot that strikes right to the heart of the thought:

John Howard on education and opportunity:

We went through a generation in this country where parents discouraged their children from going into trades, and they said to them, “the only way you will get ahead in life is to stay at school until year 12, go to university.” Year 12 retention rates became the goal, high year 12 retention rates became the goal. Instead of us as a nation recognising there are some people who shouldn’t go to university, and what they should do is at year 10, decide they are going to become a tradesman. They will be just as well off, and from my experience and observation, a great deal better off than many others. I think we have to change that, and it’s a very big challenge because 30 years ago, we started getting this foolish bind that everybody had to go to university. Everybody doesn’t have to go to university, and a lot of people will be a lot better off if they don’t go to university and they recognise that at age 15 or 16, and go down the technical stream.

Seems reasonable enough; why should people gifted enough to join the workforce at a young age be forced to undergo the years of tertiary education required by slower learners? Yet Howard’s mild views have provoked much hostile opposition.

(Via J.F. Beck)

I particularly like that closing statement, "the years of tertiary education required by slower learners." Because, let's be frank, that's what a lot of university students today really are, the remnant incapables who couldn't actually be competent to hold down a real job even after graduating high school and maybe a couple years of exposure. The long-term push that university graduation is the only respectible path forward has resulted in the students who have the least motivation feel the most pressure from their parents to "go to college and make something of themselves."

Frankly, if they haven't made something of themselves by then, four years of being locked up in an insane asylum with folks who haven't quite twigged to the fact that Communism was and is a losing political philosophy isn't going to actually help them generate useful talents. In fact, my suspicion is that folks who graduate from university with usable skills do so as much despite the system as because of it, likely more so.

"But Squid," I hear you saying, "what about those occupations traditionally served by the collegiate and post-graduate systems? Surely you don't think nuclear physicists and doctors are spinning their wheels while immersed in the solid support framework of their peers and educators, do you?"

Now that you mention it, I'd like to yawp an emphatic "yes!" This isn't to say that med school isn't useful from some perspective, its to mention that the strong, educating parts of med school (and physics, since I mention it) are, in fact, the places it departs widest from the traditional collegiate pattern of lecture and test. Far more educational to cut the skin off a corpse's face or flop its intestines over your forearm as you trace your fingers down the large intestine, or set up the system to run an accelerator run and sit down with a peer in the field to go over the particulate results, or spend all night in the reflector telescope building staring out at the cosmos and talking about what it means that a pulsar is blinking every three minutes. Its the departures from the staid teaching that stifles and numbs that make such explorations worthwhile, and it'd probably serve the entire structure good to have competition from a system that tossed "the traditional architecture of learning" aside and pursued a far more hands-on pursuit of knowledge.

And if it let you start at 16, so much the better.

But there's the other half of this which I've written about before, the fact that trade schools aren't seeing the applicants that they should and are, largely, being poorly served by their communities. For the past decade, trade schools have been demonized by Mainstream America(tm)(c). In fact, trades have been demonized by Mainstream America ... which is why you see the majority of the evolving trade population occupied by Hispanics and Asians today, the Black community having largely decided its either beneath them to serve society thus or bought into the collegiate myth.

Immigrant communities have always been among the bulk of trade occupations, however. The iconic Italian plummer is so for a reason, beanie, bristle mustache and all. The last cycle of American immigration had the Italians and Irish sweeping through the heartland and willing to take whatever jobs they could get. White plumbers, construction foremen, and electricians lamented their inability to get their sons to follow in their footsteps, but were willing to give the wops and micks a chance.

Today, the Irish and Italian trade business owners are lamenting the fact they can't get their sons to follow in their family business, but they're willing to give the wetbacks and slants a chance.

In fifty years, the Hispanic and Asian trade business owners will be lamenting the fact they can't get their sons and daughters to follow in the footsteps of the family business, but they'll be willing to give the greenies and grunts a chance.

Or maybe not. Its certainly within the bubble of possibility that trade occupations and trade schools will once again become an aspect of the American cultural milieu that's respected and desirable. It can be imagined that a child who finishes high school and decides to become a plumber or construction worker isn't a cause for lamentation and recrimination. Part of that movement is clearly simply practical; have you seen how much a plumber or good electrician can make these days? With the lack of certified skilled tradesmen hitting the streets, those incomes can only go up.

So, yes, maybe it really has become true that the college life is now for those who don't have the gumption or learning ability to go get a real job. Observing the current crop of contents surely provides that impression.

We can but hope that the future can shift.

Current Mood: cranky