No to liberal education and professional life: a new breed of young adult?

We are the last generation that will work ourselves to death. They are called millennials, the breed of children born in the 1980s now taking a greater place in the workforce. They value their friends, relationships, families, time off and gadgets/technology mosty in that order.

They have never not know cable, computers, CD's, the Internet and the HR world is struggling with how to attract and retain the best of them because they will only work on their terms. Hats off to them.

They get satisfaction from relationships, we get it from things. They will learn what they want when they want to and will probably also enjoy a higher quality of life without the debt we seem slavishly attached to keep the disease called MORE fed.

A "liberal" education is NOT rewarded. Focusing on what you want IS the "brass ring". From what sector of the society does the Neocon praise come? How "well read" are they? That might answer your question.

I think it is the wrong conclusion about it being a “generation thing”. Book learning as you call it is never limiting it only works to broaden a persons world and thinking no matter what you want to do afterward. It does give a person options in life.

However I see the problem with the national policy for highs schools in the "Leave No Child Behind" and how every high school child must jump through the exact *college prep* hoop geared toward attending college. Sadly High Schools no longer provide preparation to enter any trade by having the initial training in HS as they used to.

I live in NYC and all the young adults seem to have professional white collar career aspirations and want advanced degrees, most make more money then you can imagine!

I think trades and craft people will always be needed, and people will always be drawn to working with their hands, however it is a huge mistake we are making by not giving High School kids a choice any more.

Perhaps the difference is the difference between a liberal education when we were in school - similar to what is described in this 1959 commencement address - and the modern version of a liberal education which, according to many accounts, has become little more than indoctrination at many name schools.

More than a mistake ..!!

It's a "sin" ..that educators will not allow our HS students to learn how to balance a checkbook ..not teaching them Civics anymore and to exclude the development of creativity and craftmanship of "Yee old Shop Teacher" ..who by the way was always more popular than the footbal coach..

Those kids that could "hack the push" by educators with Pah-Fids and masterbation degress in Education ..all decided that No child should be left behind in not qualifying for entry into Harvard..

The left behiners ..were sent to Special Ed ..!

Dewi,

I agree with you about the trades. They will always be needed. A skilled craftsman takes pride in their work. And, IMHO a good crafts/trades person IS an ARTIST. Are the auto shops,wood shops and metal shops disappearing? I hope not.

I don't think you can generalize. If liberal education is a chance to get away from home, drink yourself cockeyed, do more screwing than a banister installer and make pithy, worthless comments on the state of a world that you know nothing about, then liberal education isn't worth the four years it occupies.

If instead, you are focused on understanding that the world isn't a People Magazine opinion poll or an AOL blurb and that real understanding of politics, human behavior and environment, philosophy and business methodology, psychology and economics can give you tools to make a deeper contribution to society, then it is not for a moment wasted.

If, you want to be a cabinet maker or an executive chef on a cruise ship (and two of my cousin's kids are just that), be it with an understanding of how you can impact upon life and be able to evaluate the dynamics of what is going on around you. If you want to be a successful cabinet maker, you better know what the marketplace wants, what effective cost/price ratios are and what kinds of woods serve best for what purposes.

If, you want to be a performer, songwriter, writer and actor, and my own son is all of the above, use your skills to impact upon the part of the world you interact with. His music has a political undertone in the context of comedy - a long-standing form that Bob Dylan perfected back in our era.

All of them went to college, not to learn a trade - they each knew what they wanted to do with their lives - but to learn a method of looking at the world and a context within which to understand it.

Our generation used college as a ticket to ride. We wanted all the things our parents couldn't afford. We wanted to be whatever it took to make money - doctor, lawyer or bank robber - and to remove the bars to upward mobility that held our immigrant families back.

By the time I was 40, I chose to trash that dream. My skills got me the big house with a view of Lake Washington - I lived in the middle of it - and Mt Ranier. My kids went to the "best" private schools and were ostracized because we weren't born in their xenophobic state nor would we ever end a conversation with, "Have a nice day!" or put a smiley face after a signature on a letter. I was born of the immigrant streets and that is where I returned by choice.

I found that what I really wanted was to make an impact on the little corner of the world that I connected with. Money was something that was needed only to buy protection against bad health and danger and as a tool to promote values through education and propagation.

I spent the next generation doing my thing. I chose to practice therapy as my platform and later, I chose to write as a means of broadening my base. I was lucky to have a wife with the same values. She contributes through the field of elementary education where she is a seminal figure in her small corner of the universe.

I gave away more of my services than I charged for. I cut back both ambition and interest in "things." A house is a roof and a car is wheels. A watch needs to be correct only twice a day. School is for learning within the context of your own personal dream. If you have no dream, stick around until you develop one!

My granddaughter is home schooled and possibly will not choose college. At fourteen this week, she is presently starring in her own off-Broadway show which she helped create and it has been renewed for an indefinite stay (yay!) beginning in January. If you are in or around NY, have kids or are one, it is a must-see!

She gets to express her values to little children and the inner children of us adults through song, dance, crafts, use of other performers, puppets and whatever else crosses her fertile mind as she evolves the show. Is she educated? You bet she is. She understands every aspect of her business - the music industry and stagecraft. She can play a variety of instruments and does so for pay. If the reviewers are to believed, she is one of the top female drummers in the country. She is personally involved in causes that she believes in and contributes her time and energy to them.

So, would I say that liberal education is meaningless. First I would say, "Define liberal education." If it means training to be nothing other than an academic, it has value then, only if you want to pass on the tenets of that education to others. If, instead, it is a method to broaden the mind, learn what passed before you got here, understand how theory applies to the practice of anything from ditch digging to prostitution, then I strongly advise an education that gives you this better understanding of who you are and what you do.

For those who want a job, and are happy to believe what the pundits right and left tell you on their blogs, save your money. Education would be wasted on you. If you have a deeper quest and want to know why Obama tugs one set of strings and Hillary another or why Rudy can't win the presidency, maybe you should learn how to interpret polls instead of how to read the words the pollster chooses to give you after he has extrapolated millions of pieces of datum into a general statement. If you think George Bush is a great president, don't come to me when you have spent your last dollar on the corner crack whore. You are exactly what PT Barnum predicted you would be.

No, I do not regret learning what a null hypothesis is or that M & X is better than X alone. My only regret is that I didn't learn all I might have learned had I known what education would mean to me two generations after graduation from college.

In highschool, you learn to spell horizon and use it in a sentence. In college, if you take the time and make the effort, you can learn to see beyond the horizon.