The Evil Empire
Y'all, the real evil empire is not in Star Wars. It's in our everyday lives, for some of us, it IS our lives. The Evil Empire is the American system of higher education.
Now this is a little complicated because my beef with college is all wrapped up with the Christian view of calling, so I'll briefly explain my understanding of it: there are two different kinds. The first is vocational--it's what you do so that you have food to eat and can support a family if need be. It could be working as a secretary or a garbage man or a chef or a surgeon. The second kind is more of a mission. Perhaps you are a missionary, or pastor, or run a crisis pregnancy center WHILE working another job. This has nothing to do with making money, it's about fulfilling the great comission. It's about preaching the gospel and caring for people. There is obviously overlap (sometimes total) between these two, but not so much as to obscure the fact that they are separate and are defined by two different goals (making money verses spreading the gospel). Obviously, the second is far more important, the Lord can be trusted to provide fiscally for his people, and we should be very concerned with evangelizing even in a job that's only meant to make money.
So that said, here is a list of problems with college.
1. It gets interests, vocation, and for the christian, calling, all jumbled and confused. College is a rite of passage, an elaborate hoop-jumping process that one is required to go through in order to have certain careers. The injustice is that the four years of college (or more of grad school) largely have nothing to do with the career that the student will eventually embark on--as I said, it's an irrelevant exercise that's all about narrowing the competition on the job marker.
2. If you want to learn a vocation, say carpentry or cooking, couldn't you learn it much faster and more efficiently through apprenticeship? So I really do have to take some science classes to be a good PA, well fine then, make the science classes required, but why am I required to take world history? Is that really going to affect my diagnosing skills? All I want to do is be a PA, and at LEAST half the classes I'm having to take are completely unrelated.
3. Money!! Many people go to college so that they can earn more money, but this is not always the best idea. This often results in a lot of debt, and in four years during which the student cannot work, or at least not as much. (I don't think it's an accident that a culture that's short on jobs forces energetic, hardworking young people to spend four years out of competition in the job market). I have friends who were philosophy, english, even pre-med majors, and who were good students, but graduated and started waiting tables. Couldn't they have done better by waiting tables for those four years and building their lives in other ways, rather than putting them on hold?
4. And my last comment brings me back to the idea of vocation and calling. The worst thing about college is that it throws a wrench in the plans of young people who have the time, freedom, and ability to seriously help society. I think it would be ideal if we could train for a vocation that would provide adequate income quickly, and then be able to concentrate following God's calling for our lives, rather than having to be a slave to school and career, while throwing in ministry as a stressed afterthought. So you feel like you will miss out on learning things you always wanted to know if you skip college? Well the knowledge is there for the taking, teach yourself! We should learn how to teach ourselves things we're interested in without having to pay people to stuff them into our brains. We should also be able to support ourselves as pharmacists without having to take 15 classes in music appreciation.
Now this is a little complicated because my beef with college is all wrapped up with the Christian view of calling, so I'll briefly explain my understanding of it: there are two different kinds. The first is vocational--it's what you do so that you have food to eat and can support a family if need be. It could be working as a secretary or a garbage man or a chef or a surgeon. The second kind is more of a mission. Perhaps you are a missionary, or pastor, or run a crisis pregnancy center WHILE working another job. This has nothing to do with making money, it's about fulfilling the great comission. It's about preaching the gospel and caring for people. There is obviously overlap (sometimes total) between these two, but not so much as to obscure the fact that they are separate and are defined by two different goals (making money verses spreading the gospel). Obviously, the second is far more important, the Lord can be trusted to provide fiscally for his people, and we should be very concerned with evangelizing even in a job that's only meant to make money.
So that said, here is a list of problems with college.
1. It gets interests, vocation, and for the christian, calling, all jumbled and confused. College is a rite of passage, an elaborate hoop-jumping process that one is required to go through in order to have certain careers. The injustice is that the four years of college (or more of grad school) largely have nothing to do with the career that the student will eventually embark on--as I said, it's an irrelevant exercise that's all about narrowing the competition on the job marker.
2. If you want to learn a vocation, say carpentry or cooking, couldn't you learn it much faster and more efficiently through apprenticeship? So I really do have to take some science classes to be a good PA, well fine then, make the science classes required, but why am I required to take world history? Is that really going to affect my diagnosing skills? All I want to do is be a PA, and at LEAST half the classes I'm having to take are completely unrelated.
3. Money!! Many people go to college so that they can earn more money, but this is not always the best idea. This often results in a lot of debt, and in four years during which the student cannot work, or at least not as much. (I don't think it's an accident that a culture that's short on jobs forces energetic, hardworking young people to spend four years out of competition in the job market). I have friends who were philosophy, english, even pre-med majors, and who were good students, but graduated and started waiting tables. Couldn't they have done better by waiting tables for those four years and building their lives in other ways, rather than putting them on hold?
4. And my last comment brings me back to the idea of vocation and calling. The worst thing about college is that it throws a wrench in the plans of young people who have the time, freedom, and ability to seriously help society. I think it would be ideal if we could train for a vocation that would provide adequate income quickly, and then be able to concentrate following God's calling for our lives, rather than having to be a slave to school and career, while throwing in ministry as a stressed afterthought. So you feel like you will miss out on learning things you always wanted to know if you skip college? Well the knowledge is there for the taking, teach yourself! We should learn how to teach ourselves things we're interested in without having to pay people to stuff them into our brains. We should also be able to support ourselves as pharmacists without having to take 15 classes in music appreciation.
posted by Hope | 2:19 PM
2 Comments:
Whew. Not a bad thesis. There is the rebuttle that surviving in life, and in most vocations, is all about jumping through hoops, so jumping through hoops in college is actually relevant by being irrelevant. The problem with that is that life isn't supposed to be all about jumping through hoops. Of course, we do learn lots about dealing with sin, which isn't "supposed" to be there. So, is learning about irrelevance actually relevant? Or would it just be better to go ahead and get out into the real world and be apprenticed to irrelevance, and be earning money and having more time for "mission" at the same time?
Anyway, good post.
Love.
Still bitter about an O-Chem grade, I see.
In all seriousness Hope, don't you see the usefulness of those in the medical field having experience and training beyond what they would get in an apprenticeship?
For instance, in the US, you won't see a whole lot of cases of tuberculosis or malaria. If you go to Africa and practice medicine there, you'll want to know how to diagnose and treat those. Or, if you learn medicine by job-shadowing a doctor in Alaska, odds are you won't be able to help much when a Georgian has heat exhaustion. Or whatever.
Certainly I see your frustration and understand the evilness of a $30K/yr college education, but I also see the relevance (particularly for you) of being VERY well-rounded in biology, anatomy, and maybe, *gasp* chemistry as well :)
But no worries, I haven't yet partaken of the 'what kind of person will I become' Kool-Aid just yet.
Cheers
-Nathan
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