My Thoughts Exactly

The Horse Thief has a post up that gets across a point I've often had trouble expressing. Go read it. Then take a look at Mike Rowe's website. I'm a huge fan of Dirty Jobs and always suspected Mike was a pretty good guy.

While you're at it, watch the movie Office Space. It makes a pretty good point as well. There is a lot of societal pressure for everybody to go get some plush office job. All the way through school my teachers and everybody else told me "Oh, you're so smart, don't waste that." As if anything that doesn't require a college degree is a waste of time. They also made it seem like anybody who didn't have an inside job was a failure. That's a frightening trend in what passes for "education" these days. The truth is that a high school diploma, and, for that matter, most college degrees, don't mean much these days. I had a roomate who majored in something called Human Development and Family Studies, and I could have aced most of his exams just by being early to the doctor's office a couple times and reading a few old issues of coffee table magazines. That's what happens in a society where everybody must have a degree.

I'd like to see a return to the old way of doing things, where people taught themselves more, but that isn't likely to happen. Who has time to teach themselves anything? If they did that, they might miss American Idol.