06-16-2020, 10:46 AM
(06-16-2020, 01:47 AM)taramarie Wrote: Education only goes so far, pbrower. Life experience is also education and far more useful as it is real world experience. For instance as an example. I am studying the slovak language. That education can only go so far. Hearing those words used in the real world and learning context, how it is pronounced and done repetitively, that is how that will stick in my head. Education does not equal one is better. Life experience is education also and some people have done bloody well for themselves without degrees. I will give another example. I have a bachelor degree in multimedia design. I studied film and animation. Think i would gain employment? Nope.
Understood. Our economic system better resembles a casino than a rational market -- except that the economy ordinarily is expected to produce something. Casino gambling is a zero-sum game. For most people a college education (if they go that way) is the most expensive bet of their lives. Millions of people with college degrees find themselves fully qualified to do what they could do without a college degree. Even going into a skilled trade has its risks. If one has substandard aptitude, then one will fail. In either case -- it's off to a career in retail or in manufacturing labor.
By the way -- congratulations on your efforts to learn Slovak. Even if it is a language spoken by few people, you expand your universe greatly by learning a Slavic language... any Slavic language.
Quote:Firstly, the tools i need are in the thousands of dollars. Second of all, in my corner of the world what i trained for, there are not many opportunities for employment. What the fuck is the point of having a bachelor degree if one cannot use it? You need to stop equating education with success on a high horse because it means nothing if you cannot use those skills for building your life around it. It just means i have a big loan around my neck at present. Thankfully i have been lucky recently as my father in law has given me all the tools i need to make a start at what i studied and you know what? He built his company in something he didnt traditionally study in school, but from life experience....he is a successful millionare. Meanwhile my hubby's cousin who never went to school for animation now owns the most successful animation advertisement company in Bratislava and also is a multi millionaire. Give this some thought.
The value of a college education is that you get to challenge assumptions that you accepted smugly in K-12 education. Some topics just aren't normally taught in K-12 education; they are survey courses in early-undergrad education such as economics, psychology, and philosophy. Maybe you can learn (with limitations) a language such as French or Spanish (usually the two easiest foreign languages for a native speaker of English) -- but not something that can really broaden your understanding of the world. If there were one language that I would now seek to learn, then it would be Russian.
Ideally one learns certain things in college... that there is more to life than "sex and drugs and rock-n-roll" for which one needs no formal education. One can stand to learn that there is more to life than conspicuous consumption, bureaucratic power, and economic gain. Maybe one attends a good college and ends up becoming a K-12 teacher, a county agent, or a member of the clergy because one discovers that...
1. any two idiots can fornicate, which explains why there are so many idiots
2. drugs and drunkenness are for fools
3. some music might better suit you (classical? jazz? folk?) than the Top 40 schlock
4. conspicuous consumption doesn't really impress people, and the word "luxury" is a sham
5. bureaucratic power is the ability to do barbarous things with a thin veneer of civilization
6. a clean conscience is more precious than any car, jewel, mansion, etc.
OK, so you get a college degree and because the time is a recession all that you can do upon graduating is to work on an assembly line. But you have taken some courses in psychology, economics, philosophy, and even business. Guess what! You become the shop steward. Guess what! You are able to cut down the hollow arguments of people in $800 suits who rented a Cadillac or Lincoln at the airport to get to the office where the union contract is being hammered out. Maybe you can look at the financial statements of the company and recognize how profitable it is... and discover that your fellow workers are terribly underpaid. Maybe you are doing far more good for Humanity than those over-paid executives who wouldn't dream of any other life than the "American dream", One of those fellows got a new model when he was 40 -- and I don't mean a car. She looks much like his wife did twenty years ago... and his kids are spoiled brats.
As for the K-12 teacher... little is more precious than the well-honed mind, is there? The county agent? Before you disparage agriculture, remember that nothing keeps the peace so effectively as a reliable supply of food. Clergy? You are the one who ends up visiting the terminally-ill in the nursing home and the one who consoles the grieving. You are the one who often ends up by default the consequences of choosing between right and wrong. Yes, it is morality that keeps us from doing horrible things to people.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
