World isn't over.

[conuly]

Yay.

(Other things everybody posted about and I didn't: That wedding thing. I managed to avoid the topic entirely until Ana came up to me and asked if I knew "Queen Elizabeth's grandson" existed and had gotten married.)

On the subject of Ana, she's been having more reading comprehension homework lately, mostly easy peasy stuff. Some of it is so easy she doesn't even read it, she just does the questions, a trick I taught her last year. (Questions first, reading second. Even if you have to do the reading to answer the questions, by reading the questions first you can just skim.)

Now, I've had my questions about the assumptions and moral agenda behind Ana's homework before, but this one takes the cake. It's about this man sometime during the last century who, as a teenager, starts doing deliveries for a bakery. He works hard, is successful and well-liked, and all without finishing school.

Of course, there are a lot of ways to express the fact that in the past, it was less common for people to have high school diplomas (to say nothing of going to college!) For example, you could say just that. Or you could hedge around the subject and just say "after he left school" and make it sound like he left at the same age kids leave today. Or you could, as I would, say that not everybody has always believed it's wise to make every person spend 16+ years in school (largely sitting in a seat being told stuff, no matter what they tell us about new methods, and mostly stuff they don't actually need, no matter what they tell us about being well-rounded and how we'll use these facts later!) just so that they can support themselves. (Support themselves! Not necessarily have a very well-paying job, but support themselves at all!)

But no. The way Ana's text expresses this fact? "In the past, people didn't understand the value of education."

If they had, that loser would never have been successful, kiddos, because nobody would give an ignorant slob the time of day if they knew better like we do now! Stay in school! Ain't nobody letting you drive cakes around town if you don't!

Oh, gosh, now the education police are going to arrest me for my jocular use of the word "ain't". I only said it because I don't sufficiently value education.

Comments

[siderea]

Oh, arrg.

(And thanks for reminding me, I gotta go write a letter to the DSM people about the new diagnosis name "PTSD in Preschool Children".)

[jadeejf.livejournal.com]

That's so silly. I have a lot of friends without degrees who are doing just fine. I kind of think education is a little overrated, in some circles. I hate to be all 'don't educate yourselves' but I do think it's a bit of a ... profit-driven enterprise these days. :-/ Not that it isn't good, just, you know, it may be that it shouldn't be valued quite so highly. Certainly hard work is a much more useful function, if you ask me.

[leora.livejournal.com]

One of my brothers dropped out of high school. He didn't like it. He was bored, and he wasn't learning much. He'd been running his own business for a few years already, and it was starting to take off, and he just didn't see the point. He is still self-employed and doing more or less okay (the more or less is more related to the serious health problems that run in my family, and I see no way staying in school would have made a difference to that). He did end up going back to get his GED, but it was more because he decided that he wanted one. He didn't need it for anything.

Now, I don't think that path will work for everyone. I'd generally recommend most people do stay in school. But, to the best of my knowledge, he's respected within his field, and still running the business he started when he was 12.

He's also fairly well self-educated. School didn't work well for him. It just never was a good fit. I took to it so well, and I learned much better in that environment than I did on my own. but he didn't, and he did learn quite well in other ways.

[noodles-morgyn.livejournal.com]

I'm really impressed that he started a business when he was 12 and it's still going... what kind of business is it?

[leora.livejournal.com]

Buying and selling collectibles. It started as a hobby; he was into coin collecting. He branched out into card collecting, and became a hobbyist and a dealer. By the time he was about 14 or so, he was regularly going to card shows and having a table and so forth. He still mainly focuses on baseball cards, but he works with all sorts of collectibles at times.

He couldn't have done it without my father's support. My father helped him with investment capital, drove him to shows, and encouraged him along the way. But by the time he was around 20, he was pretty well known in his field, because he had been advertising and showing up to shows for years.

He has always had a knack for knowing what trends were. He somehow was able to catch on to what the fads and fashions were while everyone else in my family was oblivious. He uses that to tell what collectibles are a good investment sometimes. But also a lot of it is learning tons of details about the value of various collectibles and learning to distinguish the tiny details that make a huge difference in value.

Of course, he has totally lost all interest in having a collection as a hobby by this point. But it has worked out well for him, and I think he's a lot happier being his own boss than he'd ever be in a more conventional job. He's good with people, but he likes his independence a lot. Plus, he's really useful if I ever actually want some collectible, because even if he doesn't work with it himself, he probably knows how to get it.

[leora.livejournal.com]

On a vaguely related note... my other brother dropped out of college halfway through feeling he'd learned as much as he was going to benefit from. He works as a computer programmer (I have no idea of the technical title or details as I'm just not geeky enough... he does stuff with computers, it likely often involves code), and he's doing fine. My sisters and I all finished college though, although it took one of them a while and more than one school to finish, but she ended up also getting a masters in education and a law degree and works as a lawyer now. She has the most degrees and formal education of all of the siblings though, having gone past college.

I loved my college education, but it was good ~for me~. I'm a strong supporter of different things being right for different people.

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

I think it may also depend on the individual. Like, I feel as if only the really entrepreneurial or naturally gifted types are usually able to make a good living without that piece of paper now, partly because of the value placed in the paper, and partly because they need their book-learning to give them something worth selling to an employer.