things which occur to me

off the beaten path

I've always taken things in academia rather slowly. In my case, I suspect it was largely because I found it too easy. It bores me to study things that I absorb quickly or things I'm merely required to use for regurgitation. Hence I have a passing acquaintance with organic chemistry or astrophysics, but not much use for calculus or biology (outside of evolutionary biology which has some interesting theoretical applications), and an enormous appetite for the utterly useless fields of military history or African topography/geography as they apply to Colonial Europeans. Unless of course I'm eventually getting around to building a personal empire in Africa.. but given how profitable that was for Europeans, I don't think that's a very wise plan.

Generally my experience has been that most people do not find either the pursuit of knowledge, the acquisition of it, or the processing and interpreting of it, very easy, and by extension, very fun. I do all three with alacrity when that mood strikes, and I consume random things in my mind (Wiki is great for these learning binges and for depriving me of much needed sleep). I've noticed that, in general, very smart people tend to want things to learn about it. They feed themselves on knowledge and thoughts of all corners of interest that may strike them. Give them a direction and the next week the taskmaster will need to find a new task, or risk losing a prodigious student to boredom. Such people are rare however.

We could say that, logically, it follows half the population is of below average intelligence. But intelligence isn't quite the sole factor of college success, or even life success and basic human decency. I think it follows mostly that the vast majority of people attending colleges aren't really cut out for colleges. Maybe the timing is wrong. Even I went to work first, rather bummed out and rather burned out on schools. Only when it became apparent that I still have considerable gifts that I needed to start tapping did I return. Most people have to have some combination of intellect, motivation, and hopefully a clearly defined goal (at some point) to succeed at college, as well as having some basic tools for employing these things in a self-directed fashion already developed. I hardly think these are skill sets that we would find broadly available across the population, certainly not the way we educate now both in schools and colleges.

Some people on the other hand merely return because it's a path to some meager promotion or entrance into a field previously denied by their inadequate certifications and educations. I'd have to argue then that most such people really don't belong in college. That essay makes the solid point that it's nice to have people with a passing familiarity with literature, or history, or chemistry, whichever seems most useless in their later profession. For example, strange as it seems learning how to write isn't really about writing. It's about constructing a schema for how we look at something and trying to explain it to someone else. That's far more important than getting grammar and citations right, and it's really the part that seems to frustrate people to no end. Making cogent arguments is not as simple as it sounds, at least to most people. In fact, it actually sounds quite boring and tedious to most people, as though the mere fact we are able to entertain an argument without making fart noises or drooling makes it clearly valid. We require everyone to take it and do silly little writing conventions in order to demonstrate mastery of the subject at hand, even though the overwhelming majority of people will never need any of these silly little writing conventions ever again. Most people won't need to or won't even try to get something published as a writer. Why is it taught this way? Because somewhere in there people are supposed to be making a thesis argument and have learned how to assemble data points to support their flimsy assumptions.

So yes, I'd agree that having a population of people that understands the difference between making sense to yourself and making sense to everyone else is a useful thing. It's not why these people have returned to school. They want jobs. In which case there are obviously some skills a college will provide them, for a nice fee. The bulk of their abilities will be developed in the form of on-the-job training, not in textbooks. Practical skills in other words. And many of these people probably don't understand that these necessary practical skills will be severely undermined if they lack the ability to easily acquire more practical skills in the future. In other words, we'll probably see them back again and again without a clear idea what to make of their successful attempts to fail. It's somehow assumed that mastery in the classroom is a vice versa relationship with the real world, and along the same lines, that all people learn equally well from a class setting as they would from the real world. This is a colossally idiotic assumption on both fronts.

This was mostly spurred in my mind because it appears to be roughly around graduation time for high schools around here. My advice to most high schoolers around here is that you're not college material. And that's not being mean. I suspect it's a far greater waste of their time and resources to attend classes for which they lack basic intellectual skills for, for which they lack interest, and for which they (or their families at least) can be parted of large sums of money. I recently made such a reference.. and was at least mockingly vilified for my blatant honesty. But nobody bothered to argue with me either.

The essential dream of America referenced at the end of this article was expressed in the Wizard of Oz story. We're probably right to be an optimistic or idealistic nation in some respects. Idealism doesn't reverse reality without realistic interpretations once in a while. Reality checks basically tell us that both the methods we use to try to pass children along to get into college are wrong, and that the ability to succeed once in college is generally lacking. Statistically the percentage of people who actually get a bachelor's degree is around 15-16% (this was around 2002, it's higher since then supposedly). Roughly half of those people proceed on to higher degrees, either because of professional choices or simply because they want Dr. in front of their name someday. A few of those people are probably in my boat and do this sort of thing because it interests them (and maybe profits them something in the long run). I won't get heavily into the gaps between the quality of degrees at one institution or another. Logically speaking, if the quality of high schools can vary so greatly even within the same metropolitan area, one can expect the quality of higher education to vary greatly as well. Even the education received at highly regarded institutions is suspect (people can graduate Harvard without ever taking a basic history course for example). I fail to see how mastering some minute volume of history, say South Pacific Islanders, is going to supply someone with the essential thought processes of history, let alone an understanding of history itself. Not to say I wouldn't take a course on that, but certainly not right off the bat.

Taking things like this into account, even that 16% figure is rather spurious. So what should I conclude to tell people? That they will be one of every 6? Those aren't bad odds.. but I'm also not inclined to gamble with them either without a very polished poker face and someone I'm confident I'll bully/bluff out of a hand. Life can be related to a poker game, but it isn't a poker table. One can't bluff everyone all the time.

For whatever reason we have a cultural aversion to more practical training. Professions with minimal in school training can in fact pay rather well (thanks be to unions for once, maybe). There is generally a need for people who can fix machines, build machines, run simple (but sometimes unpleasant) businesses, etc. The more people are inclined to avoid such things, the greater the need will be. It's not glamour to tell people their kids are going to be a mechanic (even for a just a little while) instead of a doctor. But it's not as 'mean' as letting people waste billions of dollars a year on secondary schools, following dreams that a small percentage of them are qualified for, before they figure this out. Some kids can get lucky. I don't care much for luck, I prefer raw material to base things on. Your kids, Americans, are not that smart. Learn to live with this fact, and hope to improve upon it.