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The Nation's Pulse
Career Planning for Dummies
So much for being able to write, let alone see the handwriting on the wall.
Cursive handwriting will no longer be taught in several elementary schools, according to a recent New York Times story, plus which job marketers now question the need for a college education when it’s so hard to find work no matter how many degrees you have.
Doing away with the tiresome need to learn handwriting, and indeed with learning itself, is a long overdue development. By sheer dumb luck, the United States has done extremely well at graduating a nation of knuckle heads despite such impediments as being able to write in longhand and preparing for higher education.
But if U.S. high school students expect to hold on to their traditional place as global know-nothings on history, math, geography and literature, it’s time to better organize the dumbing down of American youth. It makes sense to discourage kids from having to learn anything beyond the age of 17 when they might make better use of their time on the unemployment line and welfare rolls.
By abandoning the need to learn handwriting and by sending young people off to obtain pointless four-year educations, it’s now possible to create even more high school students who can’t find Iraq on the map, think the Civil War was in the 1960s, and never heard of Vice President Joe Biden. By accelerated illiteracy programs, high schoolers might one day not even need to know what a “map” is, nor a “vice president.”
One efficient way to achieve this goal is to stop forcing children to write. Instead of teaching handwriting, there clearly needs to be grade school courses in texting, twittering, and the use of initials, smiley faces. and icons in lieu of burdensome words and sentences longer than 144 characters. In lieu of cursive handwriting, the curriculum can start focusing on teaching kids how to communicate through cave drawing and smoke signals.
Likewise (and as I myself noted decades ago while flunking algebra), math is a huge waste of time when calculators are so handy, and when dreary historical data — indeed, facts of all kinds — is but a mouse click away on Wikipedia. Why bother with the arduous work of learning geography when Mapquest and GPS are available? As for formal English, nobody really needs to speak much anymore when they can communicate so much better via iPhone. E-mails are already going the way of the handwritten letter.
That old idea of learning for its own sake is so last century. You say you can’t get into Harvard or even a community college? Not a big deal. For the career-minded, there is always McDonald’s Hamburger University, where you can earn an advanced degree in Egg McMuffin engineering.
A college degree, it now appears, may actually hinder you when you look for a job, as this transcript from a major head-hunting firm reveals:
Human resources interviewer: I see here on your resume, Tom, that you spent four years at Yale studying English literature — exactly what was the purpose of that? You don’t seem to have used your time very constructively when you might have been learning the fine points of dicing onions, emptying ketchup bottles, and dispensing Quarter Pounders, all useful skills in today’s complex business world.
Applicant: I realize I messed up, but I consider those four years at Yale youthful indiscretions that shouldn’t count against my chance for employment here. I might also point out that I have zero knowledge of current events, and, better still, I can’t even write my own name!
HR interviewer: Well, that’s a start. But I’m worried that a college education may get in the way of your work here as fry cook intern. I’m not sure we can afford to take a chance on someone who frittered away four years at Yale reading Chaucer, Keats, and Shakespeare.
Applicant: But I need to point out that I was next to last in my class, with a 1.2 grade point average, flunked out twice, and was suspended for cheating on a final exam.
HR interviewer: It is encouraging that at least you made an earnest effort to squander your time at Yale.
Applicant: I did my best. I almost forgot to mention that I can’t spell and haven’t opened a book since graduation. Certainly that should count for something.
HR interviewer: Hmm, yes, that’s pretty impressive, but I just don’t know. Let me ask you a few final questions, a sort of oral exam. Who exactly is Barack Obama?
About the Author
Gerald Nachman is a writer in San Francisco and most recently the author of Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!: Ed Sullivan’s America (University of California Press).
Letter to the Editor View all comments (52) | Leave a comment
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John Daniel| 5.25.11 @ 6:23AM
It's a bold leap to assume that English literature majors even study anything quite as challanging as Chaucer, Keats and Shakespeare....
ENOUGH ROPE| 5.25.11 @ 1:41PM
End the public school system by replacing it with private secular and private religious schools.
Here is my comment on the 03/25/11 TAS "Dewey's Disciples: From Madison to Maryland and Beyond:"
Ideally, school taxes should not be remitted to the government at any level to avoid bureaucratic costs and political trickery. Instead, parents should keep the money and disburse it to the private schools of their choice. How will parents who do not pay property taxes, which is the source of school taxes, have the money to pay for private school tuition? I have ideas, but this commentary would become longer than it is to discuss them. Minds in favor of private schools will find creative and non-governmental solutions.
The private schools should be initiated by secular and religious groups to offer choices between private or religious schools. There would need to be some kind of transition period and plan for the COMPLETE termination of public schools and the start up phase for private schools.
Yes, some parents will spend the tax savings on other things instead of budgeting for their child’s school. What to do about indigent students and students of imprudent parents? In the 1940s I was educated in Catholic elementary schools which were financed by the general collections at Masses and by the teaching services of many nuns. The nuns are gone mostly. Perhaps a portion of collections by ANY religious denomination could supplement the funding for whatever private school that denomination chooses to sponsor partially or fully. With the increased funding from no school taxes, MAYBE private secular and religious schools would have a sufficient excess of revenues over expenses to accept some needy students. At some point, the schools would need to do a means test for needy students to prevent exploitation of the schools’ generosity.
I do not know the exact provisions needed to do a 100% switch to private schools, but I hope the revenue stream that funds the private schools is sufficient to attract teachers who MAJORED in the subject they teach at a college that is NOT a school of education. The revenues must be sufficient to provide for benefits and retirements that are normal for other sectors of private for profit organizations. Obstructive requirements to become a teacher should be repealed; they are just union gatekeepers.
House Republicans should pass a resolution that urges states, especially states with Republican governors, to end the public school system and replace it with private school vouchers funded by current school taxes. Collection of school taxes to fund vouchers for private schools should be an INTERIM measure until public schools are replaced by private schools that are comprised of secular and religious schools. States should limit cities to governmental departments that are essential, such as police, fire, water, streets, and a very few other essential services; public schools should not be one of them.
Government control of the monopolistic public schools systems enables the government to brainwash students with the government party line which opposes Judeo-Christian values, U.S. political, economic and cultural history, the U.S. Constitution, and the idea that our individual rights come from God–not from the state.
I am persuaded that the leftists who control the schools of education and public schools work to make our students, and thus our citizenry, ignorant and incompetent. Why? Ignorant and incompetent citizens can be duped easily.
It will take generations for the permanent underclass created by Liberals and Progressives to be educated about the truth that there is no free lunch. All students should be taught that socialism works until there is no one left with money to confiscate for redistribution.
The victims in the underclass need to learn that they have been duped by the Liberals and Progressives. The public school system monopoly must be replaced by private schools that teach truth, goodness, beauty, virtue, wisdom, love of God, and love of neighbor. Starve the public schools of school taxes that should fund the private schools.
When the current thugs who rule the Senate and the Executive Branch are replaced by Conservatives and Republicans, then a law should be passed that grants the states the CHOICE to do all of the above. I say choice, because we must limit the Federal Government to the powers stated in the U.S. Constitution.
Do the above, and America will become once again a nation under God.
SpiralArchitect| 5.25.11 @ 5:23PM
Why would the Gov want an educated population?
Surely you know better than to suggest otherwise.
Occam's Tool| 5.25.11 @ 8:39PM
Isn't that sad? I read Chaucer as a High School Junior, as well as Shakespeare---and it was in Public School!
Zak Klemmer | 5.26.11 @ 12:07AM
I read 1984, Animal Farm and The Wealth of Nations when I was in Jr. High but they were of my own choosing not assigned reading. Then I discovered Ludwig vonMises and F A Hayek in High School so there!
Dee See| 5.25.11 @ 6:47AM
"And understand we're being told that we're
born to 'serve' the 'economy'. And what's the
'economy' to be? ---Whatever they say it is."
-ALAN WATT
(fearless online coverage)
---For a breakdown on the education mess,
the ending of education in favor of training
(sovietization) is dealt with by Charlotte Isserbyte
'The Dumbing Down of America' site online.
ESSENTIAL---------------------------------------------
Doctor_X| 5.25.11 @ 7:03AM
I wish I didn't know who Vice President Joe Biden was!
Hey, at least McDonald’s has a career path for its employee’s that’s more than most companies have. You can go from fry cook to team leader, to assistant store manager to store manager and then on to a corporate level job as district manager. My only path for advancement is advance out the door to another company. When our manager was “reassigned” no one in the department was considered for the job, they brought in an outside person, which is typical for most companies. Then they wonder why people leave and don’t give notice. It works both ways!
skedaddle| 5.25.11 @ 9:32AM
The running joke at the company I used to work for is that if you worked there you weren't good enough to work there. I'm sure you know exactly what I mean.
dsayne| 5.25.11 @ 7:09AM
Question #1 is unfair. Nobody really knows who Barack Obama is!
PolishKnight| 5.25.11 @ 9:30AM
You have a future in standup comedy!
Shocking | 5.26.11 @ 6:58AM
Agree, the funny part was the last question...
mzk1| 5.26.11 @ 6:00PM
Well, the answer was in the following question. He's the guy who didn't know how many states are in the union.
Kurt in S.L.C.| 5.28.11 @ 10:14PM
Well yes but he has an excuse,while he may have attended a prestigious prep school,Occidental,Columbia(maybe),and Harvard,he WAS an Affirmative Action admit.
Appleby| 5.25.11 @ 7:20AM
When I was interviewing the last time (about a year ago), I was actually asked by the two HR girls (their combined age still less than mine) why I had majored in Victorian History at univerity. I actually began to explain the significance of the Victorian Era to them -- and soon realized that they were absolutely bewildered by the whole concept of self-reliance, private charity, and the dawning of the era of mass production in Europe that allowed peasants and immigrants to own actual dishes and household items that had previously been reserved only for the highest classes -- kind of like Wal-Mart does today.
They obviously thought a university education ought to teach a person specific vocational skills that would lead to a Job, instead of leading a person to an understanding of the world outside their Moms basement and their PlayStation.
play nice| 5.25.11 @ 1:58PM
"Who'd of thought watching teen mom would help me in an interview? Guess it wasn't time wasted after all"
from Ruminations.com
Occam's Tool| 5.25.11 @ 8:41PM
Dear Appleby,
yeah, I know. No one catches the simplest jokes anymore that require an education.
Larry| 5.25.11 @ 7:47AM
This column is spot on. I deal with high school and college graduates every day. All that tax money that we suckers are paying to those overly paid do-nothings called "high school" teachers is indeed money right down the toilet. I suppose that those who now teach can't be entirely blamed. They're not much smarter, if at all, than those they claim to teach. In the last 8+ years, I've seen high school graduates operating at 2nd and 3rd grade levels in basic math, reading and grammar. Sometimes their scores are even lower. I've seen college graduates who don't maintain their skills, have no inquisitiveness or curiosity about learning anything, even in their own field.
We are truly becoming a nation of dopes. Thank goodness everyone has a Face Book page though. Life is good! :-)
JP| 5.25.11 @ 8:28AM
I know an RPG programmer, who has been coding on IBM systems since 1972. He has no degress, no professional certifications, and began his working career in the tool room of his father's small stamping plant. It was only by accident that he got into IT in the first place.
On the other hand, I know of a 30 year old IT security specialists who began his IT career by getting expellled from high school his freshman year (he was able to hack into the high school's HVAC system and turned the AC on during a rather cold January night). He got his GED while assisting a few local firms in setting up secure local area networks. He now commands a six figure salary. He has no degrees, no professional certifications, but he knows what he is doing and people love his work.
Michael Tomlinson| 5.25.11 @ 8:32AM
This is what Democrat teachers unions have wrought.
Public schools are a vast wasteland hostile to American exceptionalism, traditional values, the history of America and God. For conservatives the alternatives are fast becoming private and parochial schools or home schooling only.
It is time to parents were issued vouchers for education and they are left to decide where their children are to be educated or if they prefer public schools warehoused and indoctrinated into a culture of sloth, crime and corruption.
Seek| 5.25.11 @ 11:41AM
How is it, then, that I, a product of public schools, managed to secure a Ph.D. in a reputable field and wind up a right-wing nut as well? I guess there are exceptions to every rule, right?
SpiralArchitect| 5.25.11 @ 5:57PM
You desire to follow through must have originated somewhere.
Perhaps your parents don't suck? :)
Occam's Tool| 5.25.11 @ 8:42PM
When did you GO to public school. Before or after 1996?
Zak Klemmer | 5.26.11 @ 12:13AM
If I started a family today it would be on a farm away form government's prying eyes and home school only. Lease the water rights to pay for my expenses.
x| 5.25.11 @ 9:15AM
"The Nation's Pulse
Career Planning for Dummies
Gerald Nachman | 5.25.11 @ 6:08AM
So much for being able write let alone see the handwriting on the wall."
Did you do that on purpose?
PCC| 5.25.11 @ 9:27AM
Maybe the author's rant about ungrammatical writing (or, to be charitable, careless editing) should begin with his subtitle for this article.
Doctor Right| 5.25.11 @ 10:26AM
LOL!!!
I saw this, too; good catch.
The devil is in the details...or the proof-read.
JP| 5.25.11 @ 4:17PM
I saw a few run-on sentences and comma splices...
Petronius| 5.25.11 @ 9:38AM
Today the job market puts any rational person between a rock and a herd place. When I began working full time in 1970, a grade school education made most people employable. Now most unskilled manufacturing jobs are in the far east and they aren't coming back. That leaves trucking and residential roofing for the know nothings. But the rest of the employment scene is a mysterious labyrinth of psychological hoop jumping the candidate must figure out with no points of reference. Human resource officers want somebody who is agreeable to them. Any reaction to their veiled insults means curtains. Competence, accomplishment, and past performance do not cut it with a 20 something snot in search of attitudes matching his, or worse, hers. After that, the question that matters most is, are you the minority the firm needs to fill the federal mandate?
At the burger flipping level, the situation is beyond hope. Last week I got thrown out of a McDonalds when I lost my patience after the clerk could not process my order correctly after the fourth attempt because there is no double cheese burger key on those damned pictorial computer registers they use and she didn't know what to do.
The manager told me to leave as if her incompetence was my fault. At that point I realized the poor girl hadn't been taught anything.
The teachers of my generation forced us to learn. Teachers today are charged to forge conformity at a level which can be attained without effort, and certainly without thought. They consider thinking a dangerous threat to their agenda of social control. So mote it be. Coercion is the seed of destruction to despotism. The old school will return. It must.
Larry| 5.25.11 @ 10:08AM
If a McDonald's manager asked you to leave because of one his clerk's incompetence, it doesn't sound as he's fit to be the apple pie guy. No doubt, he too is a product of recent public school education.
Tom in Michigan| 5.25.11 @ 10:17AM
Not particularly clever satire. Nevertheless, the major reason young people today can't find jobs, in spite of how well they may be educated is that leftist policies have essentially killed opportunity. Companies are not hiring today because of the uncertainty, now almost structural caused the Administration's (so-called) attack not just on business but on our entire economic system. As long as these people are at the helm, even the best-educated and most-skilled will have problems finding jobs. The left's insidious infiltration of all our institutions continues apace as well and, this latest event is just part of their long, sad history of destroying everything they touch. That they have done SO much harm to the education system, denying children what should be their birthright is just one more piece of evidence that the left is evil, pure and simple.
Ned| 5.25.11 @ 11:20AM
Keep in mind that for many years teachers have typically been the bottom third of college graduating classes. They aren't required to actually learn anything useful, just the latest buzz words that pass for 'education theory'. Inadvertently, they have provided a working example of Darwinian Evolution... becoming less and less competent with every new generation. How far is American education from extinction?
In addition to this downward spiral much of what they (attempt to) teach is nothing but pure ideological BS - 'diversity', 'global warming' (or is it cooling this month?), and multi-culti garbage... but never any economics or American History, and very little math or science (they're too ha-a-ard!)
As an example: my sons went to school in a very highly rated district (the staff of which is, by the way, openly contemptous of the district where I now work). The Stuporintendent and Ed Directors came up with a fancy new math program that they jammed down everyone's throat. The older, experienced teachers said that this program was a giant step backward for the level of education in the district, but the administration maintained that the previous cirriculum was "too difficult" for the new teachers to teach! So, naturally, they scrapped the program that benefited the students to make it easier on the dim-bulb teachers... and many of the solid, experienced teachers retired early rather than be forced to participate.
Net result was that the administration got all kinds of attention from the education establishment for "modernizing" the math cirriculum as the most capable teachers quit in protest, and the level of education declined further. The new teachers that they brought in to replace the ones that quit were often worse than useless (one was finally fired for throwing a stapler at a student) and I paid thousands of dollars out of pocket to send my sons to an outside, private teaching company to try to get them an education in mathmatics.
Occam's Tool| 5.25.11 @ 8:44PM
My wife graduated Summa Cum Laude from Alabama in Accounting---she homeschools the kids. I KNOW she's better educated than the teachers in my kids' school.
And, of course, I certainly am.
Dave Williams| 5.25.11 @ 11:40AM
As a professor at a no-prestige school, and therefore on the front lines, I can report that the situation is far, FAR worse than anyone could imagine. With a few honorable exceptions, my kids can't read, can't write, can't think, and often can't even ask a coherent question. Ah, but their self-esteem is THROUGH THE ROOF, and that's all that counts, thanks to years of dumbed-down, Democratic-controlled "education." And now, with the rule of social media (and its attendant bastardization of English), even those few who might have been naturally inclined to thought and reflection through temperament have NO chance whatsoever to develop these capabilities. The only good news is that I do somehow manage to reach, oh, one out of every 60-70 students or so, and I think I can count on them to carry the torch of civilization forward. Still, I am just as glad I won't be around in 200 years or so....it'll be like the Middle Ages, with a (very) few enlightened folks in protected enclaves, surrounded by vast oceans of darkness, cruelty, thunderous stupidity, and bloodthirsty barbarism. Sad, sad, oh, so very sad....
Occam's Tool| 5.25.11 @ 8:50PM
Dear Dave,
I remember Freshman year at TCU. I had "fived" my English AP class, but I took an introductory composition course for my core and to inflate my GPA (pre-med). I remember some classmate of mine was starting on a passage in a book that she was asked to evaluate. She started with, "what I think she is saying is..." I interrupted at that point.
"The narrator is not female. It's Holden Caulfield, from "Catcher in the Rye." (Not hard---as you know, it's one of the more distinctive narrative voices in 20th Century fiction)
I was alone in the class in getting this. In 1980. And it has gotten worse.
But Dave, having children concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Occam's Tool| 5.25.11 @ 8:50PM
Dear Dave,
I remember Freshman year at TCU. I had "fived" my English AP class, but I took an introductory composition course for my core and to inflate my GPA (pre-med). I remember some classmate of mine was starting on a passage in a book that she was asked to evaluate. She started with, "what I think she is saying is..." I interrupted at that point.
"The narrator is not female. It's Holden Caulfield, from "Catcher in the Rye." (Not hard---as you know, it's one of the more distinctive narrative voices in 20th Century fiction)
I was alone in the class in getting this. In 1980. And it has gotten worse.
But Dave, having children concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Occam's Tool| 5.25.11 @ 8:50PM
Dear Dave,
I remember Freshman year at TCU. I had "fived" my English AP class, but I took an introductory composition course for my core and to inflate my GPA (pre-med). I remember some classmate of mine was starting on a passage in a book that she was asked to evaluate. She started with, "what I think she is saying is..." I interrupted at that point.
"The narrator is not female. It's Holden Caulfield, from "Catcher in the Rye." (Not hard---as you know, it's one of the more distinctive narrative voices in 20th Century fiction)
I was alone in the class in getting this. In 1980. And it has gotten worse.
But Dave, having children concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Occam's Tool| 5.25.11 @ 8:50PM
Dear Dave,
I remember Freshman year at TCU. I had "fived" my English AP class, but I took an introductory composition course for my core and to inflate my GPA (pre-med). I remember some classmate of mine was starting on a passage in a book that she was asked to evaluate. She started with, "what I think she is saying is..." I interrupted at that point.
"The narrator is not female. It's Holden Caulfield, from "Catcher in the Rye." (Not hard---as you know, it's one of the more distinctive narrative voices in 20th Century fiction)
I was alone in the class in getting this. In 1980. And it has gotten worse.
But Dave, having children concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Occam's Tool| 5.25.11 @ 8:51PM
My apologies. I did not submit this 4 times.
Ohiolad| 5.25.11 @ 11:54AM
When I was going to school we were allowed to write in block letters only in first grade – after that it was forbidden and we had to write in cursive. The opening of the article seems to imply that the fact that elementary schools are no longer teaching cursive writing and requiring that it be used is a new thing. Actually it has been going on for at least a generation. Several years ago I read that over half of high schoolers taking the SAT writing exam wrote their essay in block letters, and I am sure it has only gotten worse since then. It is sad that we now have an entire generation who can only use cursive to sign their name – so much for government-run schools.
ZAK KLEMMER | 5.25.11 @ 3:02PM
U WD B SRPRISED HOW MNY INJUNEERS I KNW WHO VTED 4 OBAMA!
SpiralArchitect| 5.25.11 @ 5:30PM
You mean Farcebook, no?
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Tony in Central PA| 5.25.11 @ 9:52PM
America used to be a nation of people who knew how to make and fix things. Not so much anynore. Kids seem to look down on anybody who works with their hands, never mind that an increasing proportion of those people make a better living than college grads with some abstract, nutty B.S. degree that cost well over $100K.
Ed Brewer| 5.25.11 @ 10:50PM
Sadly, what was depicted in the movie Idiocracy as humor, is coming true only it won't take 500 years to reduce the IQ of the population into the low 80's
Dee See| 5.26.11 @ 2:59AM
--AND let's STOP using that insidious
London School of Economics term
'CAP-stone-IT-all-ism' ---UH, we meant
'capitalism'.
Remember ---to them, we're the ITs.
GET BACK to using the term FREE ENTERPRISE.
---Get, and keep, the Social Darwinism
and EUGENICS Freemasonry ops
out of your idioms and terminology.
This is KEY.
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