A Word to the Wise and the Not So Wise

A Word to the Wise and the Not So Wise
Written by Burt Prelutsky
Monday, June 12, 2006

I’m here to announce that we are not a nation of scholars. Good grief, we’re barely literate. It’s a wonder that more of us don’t walk around with our knuckles dragging on the ground. And it’s about time that high school counselors and all the rest of us quit pretending that every 17- and 18-year-old squirt should be shoehorned into colleges and universities.

Probably half, maybe three-quarters of the kids wandering around the Groves of Academe have no legitimate reason to be there. Of course, I realize that in order for those youngsters to be out in the work force where they belong, employers have to stop demanding a B.A. as a prerequisite to employment. Most jobs just aren’t all that demanding.

Like youth, a liberal arts education is generally wasted on the young. If the kids aren’t majoring in engineering, medicine, or math, they’re probably just goofing off. There’s nothing wrong with goofing off. That’s how most grown-ups spend their weekends. Hard-working, well-meaning, parents, however, should not be mortgaging their futures so that their sprouts can devote four years to avoiding the job market.

More @ http://tinyurl.com/hjpmb chronwatch

None of this article comes as a surprise for me! For years I worked in a steel mill that recruited college grads for supervisors. Never mind that the college grad was dumber than a fence post and knew nothing about a steel mill, he had a diploma!

Now about colleges, they earn a special place with me for ridicule and a general all around bitch slapping. When my middle daughter was in college taking courses to become a registered nurse she also had to take courses in things like Medieval European History and many other useless courses. Why did she have to take those courses? Would it make her a better nurse? Would those courses enable her to better care for her patients of the future? Well of course the answer is a resounding NO!

Colleges like everything else in this country are about; dare I say it? OK since you dared me. Colleges are about MONEY! Keep the kids for four (4) years so you can charge four (4) years tuition fees instead of giving them two (2) years of full immersion courses in their chosen field of study.

Trust me on this. There is no problem or challenge in this nation that does not have the fingerprints of someone somewhere making money off it. From the border problem to college grad's who can't find Cuba on a map with no names, money is the bottom line. That's why colleges are filled with people who have I.Q.s lower than the mean temperature in an Alaskan winter.