The Undercurent

I subscribe to a wonderful newsletter called The Undercurrent. It's written by some brilliant kids who have restored my hope for the future. I see that not all youth are mouth breathing casting rejects from Idiocracy. I wish that there had been something like this when I was in college. Back then only the Ayn Rand Institute put out a newsletter and it was, to be honest, stuffy.

In this month's edition they have an article called "College, Because They Said So". The author, a bright guy named Noah Stahl, says something I've been saying nearly my entire life, that a college education, in and of itself, is not the panacea to mankind that the elites preach that it is. Not everyone is educable. Not everyone should go to college. It's why our drop-out rate is so ridiculously high.

I have four children. One is still in high school but has plans to go to college. Of the three out of my house only one is going to college. He's the one I thought least likely to go to college or desire more education. He's an art major. He plans on doing digital animation, and if what I've seen from him in the past 2 years is any indication, he's going to be fantastic at it. However, he went into the Marines a few weeks after graduating from high school and then went to war in Iraq. By the time he was out he was ready to settle in to filling his brain with more than mortar trajectories. Yes, these was math involved that the jar heads understood.

Now my oldest son, the one I was sure would go to college and get a degree in history and wow us all with his analysis of how things really went down. He's currently working at a Do It Yourself store, years out of the Marines and no real direction. It's not that he isn't bright, but his kind of intellect is not the type to sit in a classroom and be told what to think. Because that is what a history major endures before being set upon in the world to stand in unemployment centers looking for work as a burger flipper.

And that is why not everyone should go to college, or even be encouraged to do so. Why? The world needs ditch diggers, too. Liberal elites have gotten so many people above their ability to achieve anything that most of us think we're too good to work for a living, to produce anything. It should be automagically handed to us merely for the virtue of having sat in a class for years and getting a piece of paper for doing it. These kids leave college thinking a job will be handed to them, at the top echelons and they are quite unwilling to accept anything less than CEO or department chair for having grabbed a sheepskin.

It's not a real world vs reality thing. We set their expectations too high by telling them that a college education is their right for having been born into this country. Never was this brought home to me better than when Baylor University had a job posting for a an assistant librarian, part time at $6 an hour for maybe 20 hours a week. Sounds great for a student, right? The main requirement was that one have a masters degree to apply.

Huh? Buddy, no one with a masters degree is going to apply for that job. And yet they did find someone. I called out of morbid curiosity. A grad student working on their doctorate needed money.

What is wrong with this picture? Is this the unending Utopia the Elites promised? Working what is essentially a burger flipping job with the MASTERS degree it took at least 5 years to get. At the very least. It certainly doesn't seem like the land of puppies, kittens and unicorns farting rainbows to me.

I could be wrong. But, I seriously doubt it.

Head on over to The Undercurrent and read up. I encourage your to subscribe. These kids are really thinking.

And for you Waco natives who are interested, I am starting an Atlas Shrugged Discussion group. Let me know if you're interested. So far I have a few folks who would like to do this and I've received the packet from the ARI. Going to decide on a day and time and hope we can get more than a few folks coming to talk about things.