Worthless Education

There is a columnist in the Sunday paper here whose opinions I usually agree with. I was thoroughly impressed with the article entitled Education once created cultivated minds. I loved the statement that "the impetus of American education was once upon excellence. It is now upon social mobility and jobs, not “cultivated minds.”"

He says that in earlier generations, when only the wealthy could afford the luxury of a formal education, the aim was personal development, intelligence, and enrichment. A more cultured and enlightened people provides a foundation of virtues upon which a society could be free and civil. However, since we are not a society of values or mores, but merely a society of selfish acquisition, education has more to do with gaining the upper hand than in improving one's character. You can more effectively raise the quality of a people if you start from the inside and work your way out. But we focus on destination rather than the journey and miss the mark entirely. 

So if we are not looking to improve the person, but only improve their economic worth, then America's educational goal would instead be to provide students with the tools necessary for the workforce.  But that isn't what we do in college.  We require 2 years of general education that has nothing to do with the major, and the classes that do relate to the major usually have no practical application to the job for which the student is going to school.  Teaching is a prime example.  Absolutely nothing in the required college courses prepares them for the job; in fact, it gives the prospective teachers a misguided idea of what the job will really entail.  Once they are in the field, they must throw out everything they learned in college and figure it out on the job.  However, I believe if you are going to school for any other trade, schooling will indeed give you practical education.

Even so, K-12 schools, in all their proclaiming of increasing the rigor for our children, are actually lowering their expectations.  Less and less students are graduating with enough knowledge to take entry-level courses in college.  We are training this generation to memorize and follow, not to think and create.  We are neither raising the quality of individuals nor their ability to contribute to society.  Indeed, the writer beautifully concludes that "government spends billions to create jobs and a competitive workforce but is also hamstrung by perversions of democracy that push dumbing down (No Child Left Behind) and sending unqualified people to college to study easy but economically useless subjects, leaving them with neither a trade nor the ability to think. In any case, we are not creating cultivated minds or teaching virtue."

I myself was brought up with conflicting schools of thought.  On one hand, my GT, honors, and AP teachers brainwashed us to believe that only prestigious universities offered quality education.  My step dad believed that trade schools provided the best training for a practical and reliable profession.  Life has taught me that a formal education is necessary for any employment outside the home; no one will hire you to do the most menial of jobs without the proper paperwork.  You must have a bachelor's degree (in any subject) in order to answer phones at a call-center; you must have an associates degree and be certified to change diapers at a day care center.  These jobs only pay minimum wage, but you still must have completed 2-4 years of college. 

My religious culture emphasized marriage, homemaking, and child-rearing as the most important callings in life for a woman and that an education was necessary only as a backup plan if you were unfortunate enough not to find a husband or if you lost him.  This purpose for an education is the most offensive to me, but the primary goal of most of the females that attend BYU is indeed to catch a husband; we call it the MRS. degree, and usually falls under the major "Child and Families Studies."  (I apologize to those reading this who actually earned that degree.  I am not trying to trivialize your degree, especially when it applies directly to your choice of career as a stay-at-home-mom.)

To earn this all-important paper which we call a degree, we must pay loads of money.  What is really only affordable to the wealthy is now made accessible to those that really can't afford it in the guise of loans.  We rack up supposedly justified debt for a piece of paper that oftentimes won't even get you a job since everyone else competing for that job is just as qualified as you, even if it's just flipping burgers.  I call it Education Inflation.  It is not worth the money you paid for it.

If I think it is so worthless, why in the world do I beat myself up for not having earned my degree yet?
1) I can't shed the idea I was fed that I am worthless without a degree.
2) I can't get a job without that piece of paper, even if I were in a position to do so.  I once wanted to major in Environmental/Wildlife Conservation and work at a national park. 
3) I love learning things I am curious about and if I'm going to be teaching myself the subject, I'd like to get credit for it in a concrete way that will fulfill reasons 1 and 2.
4) I would like to have a backup plan in the form of a practical job (trade) and I feel incredibly unprepared to support myself and/or my family at the moment.
5) Most importantly, I want to cultivate my mind and improve my craft (English).  I seek excellence, even if I never get published or work outside the home.