Morlocks and Eloi

Morlocks from the 1960 film.

Maybe it's all an anti-elitism movement. I dislike snobs, too. I go into towns in my area, sometimes, in which it feels like the population sees itself as better than everyone else. It stinks to be in a restaurant and feel like you just are not posh enough to be there. But we can't create a society of mechanical oafs whose closest thing to a dream is to break rocks for a good living. 

I'm a guy (and I have made this point lots of times on this blog) who has respect for the blue-collar workers who can do stuff I can't. To me, higher education does not make you better; it's just a different path. But I do think everyone, from bricklayer to barrister, ought to be cultured. Being cultured should not be a dividing line, it should be a common thread. 

Because of all this, I'm getting sick of high school-bashing. It feels very much the same as my recent "Dirty Jobs?" post. I'm getting tired of posts that say something along the lines of "stop teaching algebra  and start teaching personal finance." Or, one I saw recently, that said:

ME: How do I do my taxes?
PUBLIC SCHOOL: Shut the ____ up and square dance. 

Haha. Funny.  Here we go again. Of course, in the grand scheme, how important is square dancing? I mean, it's pretty irrelevant, and I'm not sure how many schools still really do it. My son had a PE class in dance, last year, and they did more current dances.

But, how horrible would it be to live in a world in which we only teach our kids the practical? I'm all for home economics and personal finance for a quarter or for a semester, but this replacement of literature or algebra, in meme-logic, is an asinine thing to suggest. Just as with the job thing ("college is stupid and the trades are good") the black-and-white zombies have the loudest voices.

My uncle, a lifelong educator, once shook his head and asked, with great sorrow in his voice, when colleges became trade schools. Whenever it happened, he's right: they did. They started out as places meant to, mostly, teach people how to find God; they evolved into places of "higher earning" in which the ivory-tower-dwellers tried hard to turn base metals into gold and then they became places people attended in order to strengthen their understanding of the world. Now they are a place to go so you can "make good money."

Let's not call for our high schools nix anything that one you can't use in everyday life. Maybe if we concentrate on higher-level thinking skills -- things at the top of Bloom's "Learning Pyramid" -- people will be able to actually figure out how to write a check on their own. Don't you think? It seems to me that the skills that these people want taught are things any intelligent human ought to be able to figure out for himself.

A good reader who has read Shakespeare can certainly read a recipe; therefore he can cook. A good mathematician can certainly figure out how to balance a checkbook on her own. It isn't that hard if your brain is in good shape. If you teach a person how a fishing rod works, in physics, he not only will be able to fish, he will be able to make his own rod and eat the rest of his life.

We need contradict the loud and proud dumb-downers. Let's not become Wells's Morlocks and Eloi. Let's produce a society of plumbers who read Shakespeare and professors who can install garbage disposals. (I did it once.)

Dirty Jobs?

Welsh workmen. 

I really like Mike Rowe. I just about always agree with him. Most importantly, I respect his flawlessly logical perspectives on things. He's one hell of the thinker and he is not a tribe-joiner. He has played and still plays a huge role in promoting jobs that don't require college.

You'd think, as a teacher, that I would have a problem with this, but I never developed a bias against "the working class." And I know, full well, many of my students would be way more suited for job training than for college, after they leave my school.

Fact is: college is not for everyone, but we made it a matter of course. That's a problem. We've made it the natural next-step after high school. So, I agree with Mike Rowe: we should encourage kids to consider skilled and even unskilled jobs. These jobs are available and they are necessary and they are good, old fashioned, dignified work. There is no shame in not having a degree and there is plenty of money to be made without one.

If you are a long-term reader, though, you can probably guess what is coming next: It just seems that every good idea gets ruined by our society because, as a whole, it cannot see shades of gray; only black and white.

Instead of a nice, balanced outcome; instead of a world in which college people and non-college people live in the harmony of mutual respect and value, we have stepped into the trend of college-bashing. I'm already sick of seeing how much crane-operators make per hour and, consequently, how "dumb" it is to spend money on a college education when it will only result in student loans and high cost and not as much pay.

(If we are talking about stupidity when it comes to college, let's talk about the folly of choosing exhorbitantly expensive colleges just because little poopsie fell in love with the campus. A cozy, bricky dorm and a great coffee shop is not worth $50, 000 a year for the same full education you could get elsewhere for $10,000 -- or less, at least in the first few years.)

Here's the thing: Yeah, as a young man, the prospect of earning $35 an hour out of college would have been tempting to me. But if I had trained to become a crane operator, I would have subsequently launched myself from the crane arm after about six months of work. See, I have zero interest in being a crane operator, mechanic or truck driver or, etc... Does this mean these jobs and the people who do them are inferior? No. It just means they are not my thing.

See, I'd rather make less than a plumber and be an English teacher. And I couldn't have become an English teacher without a college education. See how that works? (I played my cards right and went to grad school for free, but even debt would have been worth it.)

God forbid we should promote one thing without denigrating the other. We seem unable, these days. (Work, good? Ugh. Then college, bad.)

Mike Rowe has a communications degree from Towson. Surely, that helped him get where he is; ironically, it helps him to promote the worthiness of non-college jobs. (And, to be clear, I think he has always been balanced in his views -- it's where the general public took the idea that is a problem; no blame falls on him, as far as I am concerned.)

In the much maligned Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indy is talking to a young man named Mutt, who complains that his mom wants him to go to college but that he (the young man) wants to just work on motorcycles. Indy tells him to hold true to his path; if he loves motorcycles, that's what he should do ("...don't let anybody tell you different..."). Later, when Indy learns that young man is actually his son, with Marian, he chastises her: "Why the hell didn't make him go to school?" A funny moment, and a good indication of the problem with the old college bias.

My sons? One is a freshman in high school and the other will go into his senior year of high school next year. Neither one of them has shown any interest in the trades. They write; they act; they play instruments; they play video games; they love movies; they love animals. But they have never shown any remote interest in anything other than the intellectual or the artistic fields. Is college a "dumb" choice for them? No. It's the only choice for them -- unless they quickly develop a deep passion for carpentry over the next few months.

These pieces are always frustrating to write because I know the people who need to read them won't. Why would they waste their time reading something by a guy who was stupid enough to go to college when he could have made a fortune as an electrician?

Who Cares How the Cookie Crumbles?

It's easy, when living in one's own head space, to assume that one is perfectly normal. A simplistic statement and (perhaps) a simplistic state. But, on occasion, one can be presented with a situation in which everyone else feels one way and he or she does not. 

For instance, I am not much good at nostalgia, especially in that I don't seem to care in the least about institutions or organizations of which I have been a part. 

My old high school? No interest since the day of graduation. My old colleges? Same thing. Sure, I remember some events fondly and memories of doing things with friends can still make me smile, but the schools were just a backdrop, to me. Somehow, that tether that holds many never attached to me. 

Not me. 

Just yesterday, a friend posted, on Facebook, that "The Great American Cookie Company" closed its stores. I worked there for a few years before graduate school. I had great friends there (many of whom I remain friends with) and we had a lot of fun. My romance with my wife, Karen, even blossomed there. Yet, I simply do not care that it closed. To me, the business had as little to do with the relationships I developed than the clouds have to do with a 747 pilot's lunch conversation. Sure, he is up in the sky, and wouldn't have been if that situation if not for the sky's existence, but the sky doesn't get credit for his conversational topic. 

It's not "Penn State" that I miss when I think of keg parties by firelight in the woods, late night talks, Saturday morning touch football games, Denny's breakfasts at four in the morning, romantic scenarios, four-hour composition sessions on the Baldwin grand piano in the empty science building theater or watching "Alf" on Wednesday nights with everyone on my dormitory floor (in some ways, the most important event of the week) crammed into one tiny dorm room... It's not Penn State, the school, I think of. It's the people. It's the life lessons learned and the impressions made. I don't feel as if I owe Penn State for that or that Penn State was, as a school institution, even any part of all that. 

My time in grad school wasn't about Rutgers -- it was about my friends; it was about in-class epiphanies; it was about evenings researching Coleridge in my room; it was about immersion in music and literature. Sure, Rutgers (and Penn State) provided the classes and the great professors (at great cost -- let's not forget, I paid handsomely for school either in dollars or in work)...but, it's the experiences I love, not the buildings or the billing office or the board... 

Maybe I feel that individualism that is so important to me; maybe I don't want a corporate or educational structure to claim any credit for my personal experiences. Either way, affection for a company or a school does not compute. If I met you  there, I might be your friend forever, but, if my respective schools close their doors tomorrow, I might say, "How about that?" and finish my bagel. That will be the most thought I give it. 

We had good times at The Cookie Company. It was also an unfulfilling, messy, and often undignified low-paying job. Why would I care that is closed? The closing of the company in no way closes the curtains on my memories of laughter, friendship, love and tomfoolery. I may still have some pride that I was a decorating wiz (many witnesses will, to this day, testify that I actually did a portrait of Juan Valdez in chocolate and vanilla icing on a giant chocolate chip cookie, once) but I don't owe the corporation for that. 

Does any of this make me selfish or weird? Either way, I can't pretend affection when I feel nothing. Love and loyalty, for me, for people, not for buildings and infrastructures. I don't disparage people for being different. I almost envy my friends who love Penn State enough to spend tons of money to go back for football games... Seems like fun. But...it just ain't there, for me. That connection between the experiences, the people and the institution...it just is not there, for better or worse...