TAKE ME TO YOUR LADDER
I was the first person ever in my whole family to go to college. My Dad left school at 14 because the family needed his pay check of $5 a week to buy more food. All of my life I've counted on my education to not only help me professionally, but introduce me to peers from university who are now spread around the planet in high positions of responsibility and in every walk of life. We help each other.
More than that, my Masters taught me to think, to process information, to develop a reasoned point of view, to not just adopt the first loud opinion I hear from some talking head on television. I treasure these skills. They made me who I am.
When I emigrated to the United States at the age of 23 I had $50 in my pocket and no return ticket. I made myself a career by meeting key people, finding out what they needed and telling them what I had to offer. I was then, and I remain now, passionate about the very big advantages of the United States compared to where I grew up, England. In the UK when I was 23, there was a widespread sense that young people should be seen and not hired… at least in any responsible position. A thousand year culture of indentured apprenticeship had created a communal raised eyebrow when any young person dared suggest they could do more than make coffee. They call it "Tall Poppy Syndrome" over there: if you stick your head up too high, it will be cut off. I was told in one job interview it would be unfair to older applicants if I were to be hired, even though I was also told I was the most qualified applicant and the only one who spoke the French needed where the job was located. Drove me crazy! Civil Rights for Youth anyone?
Over in the UK back then, it was very, very difficult to get a better job than your parent. Social rigidity and the class structure raised very few doctors whose fathers were plumbers.
But then I experienced America. Where they didn't just say The Land of Opportunity, they actually delivered it. Where the sons of plumbers and janitors ran gigantic companies and changed the world. A lot. And their method turned out to consist of a lot of really robust ladders, all called Education: If you were smart, if you worked hard, if you went to college, if you got a degree… you too could be a millionaire, make public policy, lead an army, steer an airliner, be a lawyer, cure cancer…. The sky was the limit, and it was your sky to fly. Because you were educated. Because you were American. Because you could be whatever you wanted to be. So there.
I bought the whole deal, raised my right hand… and I've continued to tear up every 4th. of July. I continue to say the Pledge of Allegiance and actually mean it. But now I look around and I see we are demolishing all the little education ladders, one rung at a time. Without the ladders, I fear we will have many plumbers but few who cure cancer. And that is a very bad and short-sighted thing to ponder, for each individual would-be ladder-climber, and for the fundamental future of our whole nation. It is where we are getting the basic value proposition of citizenship wrong: we are cancelling the leaders, architects and engineers of our future generations' success.
How can we fix this? Well, by not eviscerating the institutions we've already built, schools, colleges and universities that already proved their value millions of times with alumni making great contributions throughout society. It's the same as not eliminating fire-engines when you are short of money (your buildings will burn each other down) or eliminating police protection (your stuff will be stolen), or telling people we won't send the ambulance because there is no driver today (it could be your heart attack). The meat axe being taken to our schools and universities is somewhere beyond short-sighted and non-sighted: it is to despise, dismiss and leave our future as a nation in ruins. To apply Tea Party rhetoric to the currency of education, we are bankrupting the future to spend on other things in the present. And just like the National Debt, the national education deficit grows, feeds on itself and in the end becomes the unstoppable generational driver of mediocrity and a collapsed economy.
So hello out there all you who, like me, are deeply worried by the gadzillion dollar National Debt and the transparent political short-termism that seems to drive many of those men and women we sent to Washington to sort it out. Could we please acknowledge a few things in parallel? Can our minds even hold several thoughts at once? Debt bad. Balanced budget good. But also, life is choices: High quality rising generation good. Removing their education ladders very bad.
But look on the bright side as government takes the meat axe to education; while the rest of the world leaves us behind, we'll probably have great plumbing.
More than that, my Masters taught me to think, to process information, to develop a reasoned point of view, to not just adopt the first loud opinion I hear from some talking head on television. I treasure these skills. They made me who I am.
When I emigrated to the United States at the age of 23 I had $50 in my pocket and no return ticket. I made myself a career by meeting key people, finding out what they needed and telling them what I had to offer. I was then, and I remain now, passionate about the very big advantages of the United States compared to where I grew up, England. In the UK when I was 23, there was a widespread sense that young people should be seen and not hired… at least in any responsible position. A thousand year culture of indentured apprenticeship had created a communal raised eyebrow when any young person dared suggest they could do more than make coffee. They call it "Tall Poppy Syndrome" over there: if you stick your head up too high, it will be cut off. I was told in one job interview it would be unfair to older applicants if I were to be hired, even though I was also told I was the most qualified applicant and the only one who spoke the French needed where the job was located. Drove me crazy! Civil Rights for Youth anyone?
Over in the UK back then, it was very, very difficult to get a better job than your parent. Social rigidity and the class structure raised very few doctors whose fathers were plumbers.
But then I experienced America. Where they didn't just say The Land of Opportunity, they actually delivered it. Where the sons of plumbers and janitors ran gigantic companies and changed the world. A lot. And their method turned out to consist of a lot of really robust ladders, all called Education: If you were smart, if you worked hard, if you went to college, if you got a degree… you too could be a millionaire, make public policy, lead an army, steer an airliner, be a lawyer, cure cancer…. The sky was the limit, and it was your sky to fly. Because you were educated. Because you were American. Because you could be whatever you wanted to be. So there.
I bought the whole deal, raised my right hand… and I've continued to tear up every 4th. of July. I continue to say the Pledge of Allegiance and actually mean it. But now I look around and I see we are demolishing all the little education ladders, one rung at a time. Without the ladders, I fear we will have many plumbers but few who cure cancer. And that is a very bad and short-sighted thing to ponder, for each individual would-be ladder-climber, and for the fundamental future of our whole nation. It is where we are getting the basic value proposition of citizenship wrong: we are cancelling the leaders, architects and engineers of our future generations' success.
How can we fix this? Well, by not eviscerating the institutions we've already built, schools, colleges and universities that already proved their value millions of times with alumni making great contributions throughout society. It's the same as not eliminating fire-engines when you are short of money (your buildings will burn each other down) or eliminating police protection (your stuff will be stolen), or telling people we won't send the ambulance because there is no driver today (it could be your heart attack). The meat axe being taken to our schools and universities is somewhere beyond short-sighted and non-sighted: it is to despise, dismiss and leave our future as a nation in ruins. To apply Tea Party rhetoric to the currency of education, we are bankrupting the future to spend on other things in the present. And just like the National Debt, the national education deficit grows, feeds on itself and in the end becomes the unstoppable generational driver of mediocrity and a collapsed economy.
So hello out there all you who, like me, are deeply worried by the gadzillion dollar National Debt and the transparent political short-termism that seems to drive many of those men and women we sent to Washington to sort it out. Could we please acknowledge a few things in parallel? Can our minds even hold several thoughts at once? Debt bad. Balanced budget good. But also, life is choices: High quality rising generation good. Removing their education ladders very bad.
But look on the bright side as government takes the meat axe to education; while the rest of the world leaves us behind, we'll probably have great plumbing.
Labels: civic justice, college, education, rising generation, social justice, social priorities, taxation budget deficit, United States, youth
posted by Peter Samuelson at
1:43 PM
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