Site Presented By
Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
MLR
Published Letters: 52 Editor's Choice: 1
Stephanie is one of the best critics in the business. My gut tells me that I wouldn't enjoy this particular film, but I always respect her opinion.
Rebutting individual points of the review is fine, but if you'd like your opinion to count, I suggest you keep what you write mature and civil. Is that too much to ask?
Keep writing strong, Steph.
MLR
I think I'll pass on the novels.
Where have we heard this line before, or ones like it?
Bad relationships continue precisely because we find it so hard to give up the good. Then we're damned by those little things we're going to fix someday, somehow.
Run, buddy. And good luck.
I have no negative or positive feelings for Mr. Sharon (I try my best not to think about the Middle East), but this article is smug, snarky trash: Mr. Keillor's specialty.
Salon, I'm begging you not to support this man's sinecure as the eminence gris of NPR and other lefty media (I'm a lefty who doesn't need his self-satified stylings). Give some of those fresh, unheard voices out there a chance.
This is a serious request.
A bit of writing appropriate for a blog somewhere, but as the lead article?
Funny satire, ccps.
It's not "fornication" if you're married.
(Has there been an editorial/marketing decision to aim Salon at women aged 35 - 45? It seems like there is less and less hard news and more female-oriented fluff. My desire to resubscribe is hanging by a thread.)
When are we going to wise up and realize that the entire higher education system of the country is a scam? That it charges an egregious price to young people for knowledge that rational and lean institutions could impart at a fraction of the price and time?
Here is a telling example: I graduated in 3 years because I had 1 year of Advanced Placement credit. That 1 extra year just magically disappeared, yet my degree is just as good as anyone else's! I saved an immense amount of time and money just by passing a handful of tests for which I really didn't have to study all that much. And, if anything, the market rewarded me for not having that 4th year, as I was "smart" enough to graduate in 3.
There are some programs that are just as they should be, or close (perhaps medical school, perhaps legal programs, etc.), and it is true that there are many wonderful experiences to be had on campus. But society now requires people to get a degree simply because it's a degree, while not being satisfied with the knowledge sans degree.
The reasons for this include but are not limited to the following:
1. "College" is an industry with its own interests to protect. There are many, many people living lives of comfort based on the system without adding proportionate value to the economy.
2. "Colllege" takes a vast number of young people out of the workforce and therefore decreases competition for jobs therein. The social function of dampening labor supply should be obvious. In short, there are not enough jobs to go around, hence the increasing number of hoops required by society for the most minimal of "white collar" jobs.
3. "College" allows the ruling castes to preserve their prerogative by allowing their progeny to attend the "good" (i.e., costly) schools and forcing others to attend the "bad" (i.e., less expensive) schools. As another poster pointed out, it's forced branding of the entire populace. How interesting it would be if young people simply got out of high school and poured into the workforce without all the school stars on their bellies. Horrors, we might start to have more merit-based competition.
The pertinence of the above to the topic of the article should be fairly clear. Young people are forced to go to "college" for 4-6 years, at which time they are making little or no money. When they graduate, job prospects are still poor, and they don't have any savings but rather are burdened by "student loans."
It's a rotten, rotten system that subtracts hundreds of billions of labor value from the national economy.
What we should be doing is teaching k-12 in a very lean and mean fashion that gives kids good reading, writing, mathematical, and financial skills so that an 18-year-old graduate is ready for a basic white-collar job. Then those kids can decide whether additional education--real education--is needed to learn a trade or profession.
As for universities, they would still have a limited role in teaching those students who really wanted to pursue higher learning in the arts and sciences. And those degree programs should be focused on genuine achievement in those areas, not just supplying a plethora of mandatory "majors" from which students reluctantly pick.
No discussion of Generation Debt is complete without a thorough questioning of our malignant system of higher education.
ditch this inane ChickLit stuff as top story material. Or, as is the case here, SkankLit.
"Print" it if you must, but bury it somewhere, anywhere ("Women Who Pretend to Think Deep Thoughts" section, perhaps?), but just keep it out of my face.
Thanks.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
Salon headlines in your mailbox
