"We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing."
Great article. I have a lot of conflicting (confused?) feelings about this. I 💯 agree with you that it is necessary to have real skills and interests not just credentials. Even apart from making money, skills and interests keep life interesting. One of my “New Year’s Resolutions” is to get better at sewing. I already get a great deal of satisfaction out of making beautiful crocheted items (a skill I learned as a pre-teen: I’m now 45).
I have a university degree but feel closer to my parents’ working / middle class roots than not, most days. I suppose my husband and I have white collar jobs, but we work directly with the public, so it’s pretty gritty at times. At this point in life I’m not sure what story to tell my (still young) children. We started saving for their education when they were 2 weeks old, so they will have money. Do they aspire to get several university degrees? Do they learn a trade? I didn’t marry till I was 30 and we struggled to have children after that….I will be honest about that too. Most of my university friends never had children at all. I think about Mary Harrington’s point where she said the woman she knows with the best work life balance is her hairdresser: sets her own hours, unlikely to be replaced by AI. Whether or not that statement is completely accurate, it gets at some of the complexities one has to consider.
Great article, Keith. I see the pernicious influence of credentialism in my field of medicine. Just because someone goes to all the “top” schools and garners a boatload of degrees and subspecialty training doesn’t make them a better doctor. There is still a lot of art to the practice of medicine, especially in those areas that require good hands as well as an inquisitive, sharp mind. And then there’s “bedside manner.” THAT can’t be obtained by piling up credentials; that’s obtained through life experience, human interaction, and a genuine interest in others.
Some of the best experiences I had in my road to becoming an MD weren’t related to medicine at all. A summer working with a carpenter, and substitute HS teaching—the former gave me a respect for men who work with their hands and care about their finished product, and the latter taught me about the challenges of nurturing a love of learning in kids, and connecting with others in real time. Both served me well, despite looking weird on my CV. Agree 1000% with the notion of picking up useful skills; AI isn’t going to build or repair your house, fix the plumbing, pour a driveway, or any of hundreds of skilled jobs that we will need. And there is honor and great satisfaction to be had in those jobs well done.
The first premise is wrong. It was easier to live 50 years ago. I am a baby boomer. In the early sixties an 18 year old man, like my neighbor, could graduate from high school, marry his high school sweetheart, have a baby and support the family on his income from getting a job at the mechanic shop down the street. Not kidding. I married at 22, quit public working, stayed home till the youngest of seven was seven, and my husband did a variety of construction jobs. He got better pay as he learned more by working. But we always could easily afford the necessities.
Rent for a house, was $150. A brand new pickup $4,500. But who needed a new car when you could get a good used station wagon from $300-500 ? Life was fun and a lot was free. No one charged you ten dollars to park at the ocean and take the kids swimming. Also, college was affordable. Pell Grants covered EVERYTHING including books and rent if you managed you money well. Let’s face it, the younger generation is getting ripped off royally by corporate greed and then made to feel responsible for this third world country the U.S. has become.
Oh, is your kid not interested in anything?
Step 1, throw away their smart phone. The dopamine hits it gives reduce drive.
Outstanding article. "If you don’t want to work there the rest of your life, then use all of your spare time to develop demonstrable skills that will allow you to make a change." I'll add that if one wants to be a professional homemaker, then learn the skills required: cooking, cleaning, budgeting, menu planning, and child development.
There is one aspect that hasn’t been covered adequately in all of these essays. Automation and AI are changing the game…where a young man could have started in a factory job and work his way into
Management, today that path is problematic because there are so few factory jobs. When McDonalds moves to automate burger-flipping, how will teenagers learn the value of hard work?
Kids have no interest in life also because they have had so little freedom. Autonomy is outlawed. Too dangerous! My siblings and I had great wars throwing rotten fruit at one another when we were 8-14 years old. Some would crawl out the second story bedroom window onto the roof and aim at those scrurrying in the bushes below. 😂 what fun!
As an adult I remember in the 1970’s being pulled over by a cop. I didn’t know why he had pulled me over. He told me children are not allowed to ride in the back of the pick up! I asked since when? New law. I was stunned. We got to cram them all into this hot cab? No hair flying in the breeze anymore? Geez.
Off road we still had fun though. A favorite past time was the boys would bore two holes into an old 4X8 sheet of plywood and rope it to the bumper of my station wagon. They would stand on the plywood and “surf” while I would drive quickly around in circles in the field trying to throw them off. My husband didn’t like me playing with the kids this way of because occasionally it would result in a flat tire he had to fix. I loved having children. But quite frankly, if I had to raise them the way so many are being raised today I wouldn't want any.
"We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Great article. I have a lot of conflicting (confused?) feelings about this. I 💯 agree with you that it is necessary to have real skills and interests not just credentials. Even apart from making money, skills and interests keep life interesting. One of my “New Year’s Resolutions” is to get better at sewing. I already get a great deal of satisfaction out of making beautiful crocheted items (a skill I learned as a pre-teen: I’m now 45).
I have a university degree but feel closer to my parents’ working / middle class roots than not, most days. I suppose my husband and I have white collar jobs, but we work directly with the public, so it’s pretty gritty at times. At this point in life I’m not sure what story to tell my (still young) children. We started saving for their education when they were 2 weeks old, so they will have money. Do they aspire to get several university degrees? Do they learn a trade? I didn’t marry till I was 30 and we struggled to have children after that….I will be honest about that too. Most of my university friends never had children at all. I think about Mary Harrington’s point where she said the woman she knows with the best work life balance is her hairdresser: sets her own hours, unlikely to be replaced by AI. Whether or not that statement is completely accurate, it gets at some of the complexities one has to consider.
Great article, Keith. I see the pernicious influence of credentialism in my field of medicine. Just because someone goes to all the “top” schools and garners a boatload of degrees and subspecialty training doesn’t make them a better doctor. There is still a lot of art to the practice of medicine, especially in those areas that require good hands as well as an inquisitive, sharp mind. And then there’s “bedside manner.” THAT can’t be obtained by piling up credentials; that’s obtained through life experience, human interaction, and a genuine interest in others.
Some of the best experiences I had in my road to becoming an MD weren’t related to medicine at all. A summer working with a carpenter, and substitute HS teaching—the former gave me a respect for men who work with their hands and care about their finished product, and the latter taught me about the challenges of nurturing a love of learning in kids, and connecting with others in real time. Both served me well, despite looking weird on my CV. Agree 1000% with the notion of picking up useful skills; AI isn’t going to build or repair your house, fix the plumbing, pour a driveway, or any of hundreds of skilled jobs that we will need. And there is honor and great satisfaction to be had in those jobs well done.
The first premise is wrong. It was easier to live 50 years ago. I am a baby boomer. In the early sixties an 18 year old man, like my neighbor, could graduate from high school, marry his high school sweetheart, have a baby and support the family on his income from getting a job at the mechanic shop down the street. Not kidding. I married at 22, quit public working, stayed home till the youngest of seven was seven, and my husband did a variety of construction jobs. He got better pay as he learned more by working. But we always could easily afford the necessities.
Rent for a house, was $150. A brand new pickup $4,500. But who needed a new car when you could get a good used station wagon from $300-500 ? Life was fun and a lot was free. No one charged you ten dollars to park at the ocean and take the kids swimming. Also, college was affordable. Pell Grants covered EVERYTHING including books and rent if you managed you money well. Let’s face it, the younger generation is getting ripped off royally by corporate greed and then made to feel responsible for this third world country the U.S. has become.
Oh, is your kid not interested in anything?
Step 1, throw away their smart phone. The dopamine hits it gives reduce drive.
Outstanding article. "If you don’t want to work there the rest of your life, then use all of your spare time to develop demonstrable skills that will allow you to make a change." I'll add that if one wants to be a professional homemaker, then learn the skills required: cooking, cleaning, budgeting, menu planning, and child development.
There is one aspect that hasn’t been covered adequately in all of these essays. Automation and AI are changing the game…where a young man could have started in a factory job and work his way into
Management, today that path is problematic because there are so few factory jobs. When McDonalds moves to automate burger-flipping, how will teenagers learn the value of hard work?
Kids have no interest in life also because they have had so little freedom. Autonomy is outlawed. Too dangerous! My siblings and I had great wars throwing rotten fruit at one another when we were 8-14 years old. Some would crawl out the second story bedroom window onto the roof and aim at those scrurrying in the bushes below. 😂 what fun!
As an adult I remember in the 1970’s being pulled over by a cop. I didn’t know why he had pulled me over. He told me children are not allowed to ride in the back of the pick up! I asked since when? New law. I was stunned. We got to cram them all into this hot cab? No hair flying in the breeze anymore? Geez.
Off road we still had fun though. A favorite past time was the boys would bore two holes into an old 4X8 sheet of plywood and rope it to the bumper of my station wagon. They would stand on the plywood and “surf” while I would drive quickly around in circles in the field trying to throw them off. My husband didn’t like me playing with the kids this way of because occasionally it would result in a flat tire he had to fix. I loved having children. But quite frankly, if I had to raise them the way so many are being raised today I wouldn't want any.