I've been seeing a lot of lectures and articles lately that ask "are students learning enough/anything/the right things," and generally questioning the value of a college education.
The most striking example was from my favorite candidate, Mr. Rick Santorum, when he said this:
Not all folks are gifted in the same way. ... Some people have incredible gifts with their hands. Some people have incredible gifts and ... want to work out there making things. President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob.
There are good decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them.
Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his.
First of all, all the people I know who didn't go to college desperately want their children to be able to attend college. To imply that poor people don't want to go to college is a little far-fetched.
But his comments got me thinking--what would my life have been like if I hadn't gone to college? First off, I probably wouldn't have left Maine. I would probably have started working retail and/or secretarial jobs (the kind of things I did during summers and winters in college). I might now be at a place similar to where my Aunt Norma was at my age: twice divorced, living with my two kids and working at a bottling plant.
What do you guys think--any regrets about deciding to go to college? And should we be encouraging every kid to go to college? Maybe Rick Santorum just feels that college campuses are full of heathen liberals who will crush your children's belief in God?
College: Snobs Only?
R.I.P. Celebrities
Long time, guys! I'm just now emerging from the seclusion of writing my final project--nice to have a break from the cycle of writing and procrastination.
I'm not normally one who gets all weepy about celebrity deaths, but for some reason I was particularly struck by Whitney Houston's death this weekend. I can't say I was surprised, but I guess I had imagined that her life would be much like Liz Taylor's--she would live hard and crazy, but would be with us for a long time yet. Watching the video below (and the Grammys last night) just made me remember how much I loved her songs as a kid. She missed out on half her life (dead at 48!) and we missed out on many more years of her performances. (If there is any doubt, I submit Tony Bennett and Johnny Cash a exhibits A and B of singers entertaining us well into their old age.)
So, my question for you all: What are the ingredients that cause us to feel the loss of a public figure in a personal way? And was there ever a celebrity (sports, entertainment, or otherwise) whose passing hit you particularly hard?
Whitney Houston on the death of Michael Jackson by RichJuz
You Must Remember This
This is a bit of a dated issue, but it struck me as interesting. When Osama bin Laden was killed last month, journalists were interviewing all kinds of people for reactions, and it seemed like many twentysomethings felt more emotional about the event than people our age. When it happened I was surprised and relieved, but I knew his death wouldn’t mean the end of the war—it had a strange anti-climactic feeling to it.
What I kept hearing and reading was that people who were kids or teens when 9/11 happened really had their worldview shaped by that event. It seemed like 9/11 was a dividing line between their childhood years and the intrusion of a harsher world. We were 21 and already out of college, so I feel like maybe the impact was different for us.
Then I started to think about the 90s, when we grew up, and what the seminal events were that changed the way I thought about the world. Maybe this is weird to admit, but what I remember most wasn’t the fall of the Berlin Wall or the collapse of the Soviet Union or even the Gulf War, but the televised show trials. I remember people racing home to watch the O.J. Simpson trial, and how the bookstore I worked at sold paperback copies of the Starr Report. Hilariously, I think I also remember the impeachment trials because we had our own mini version at Goucher (when they tried to impeach Ridg Mills from student government). Ah, good times!
I’m curious to know how you guys (and your younger friends) reacted to bin Laden’s death. And what were the big national or world events that made a difference when you were young?