On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 6:31 PM, Michael Torrie <[email protected]> wrote: > <offtopic><philosophicalrant> > All that said, and this is now firmly off-topic, I've come to believe > the old story of the man telling his kids, you get an education so you > don't have to dig ditches like I do, is ultimately harming our society > irreparably. We need ditches dug. We need cars built, we need food. We > need truck drivers. We need someone to call the cable internet service > is out, or when a device needs warranty service. Work is a good thing. > I'm not sure our society has been well served by the focus on a > knowledge economy (though we need programmers and sysadmins for sure!) > at the expense of an economy that creates products and goods. > </philosophicalrant></offtopic>
You're essentially describing the situation that has culminated in hipsters on food stamps and the Occupy movement. An entire generation of kids were told to get a degree if they didn't want to flip burgers, and now that they have degrees and the jobs they were promised aren't materializing they're being told "Well, don't be too proud to flip burgers." It's tempting to blame them for getting degrees in useless crap (which is pretty much where I would put any non-STEM, non-service (i.e. lawyer, doctor, etc.) degree) but they didn't ask to be duped into taking out loans and wasting four years of their lives based on a lie that was believed by everyone and is still believed by many. Also I think I might be a bad person for being more curious about what the cultural outcome of this generational angst, shock and rage will be than I am compassionate toward the people who are suffering through it right now. -Dan /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
