While digging through my shits, doing some pre-packing organization and whatnot, I came across my diploma. I took it out and read it, and within the flowery language on it, I saw a phrase stating that I have been awarded this degree and the "rights and privileges appertaining to it." What on earth could these be?
Here's an issue that continually vexes the thoughtful: Why don't Americans read? It gets blamed on TV, the internet, bad schools, whatever. I think it's more fundamental than that. The following quote is taken from this article:
Patricia S. Schroeder, president and chief executive of the Association of American Publishers, said part of the problem could be that adults can make children feel that reading is a duty. A common complaint she hears from children and young adults is that few books relate to their lives or interests. "Reading is not really easy," she said, "unless they get into something they want to read about."
That is exactly a characteristic of people who don't read, regardless of income or educational background. They're incurious. We readers don't think that learning and expanding your horizons is a duty. It's a worthwhile, satisfying, even FUN pursuit in its own right.
I read to learn things I don't know. I want to go places I've never been. I want to live lives I'll never live. I want to think thoughts I wouldn't have come up with on my own. I want to hear other voices. And even if non-readers claim to want the same things, if it takes effort, then they lose interest. In other words, at rock bottom, they don't care. This is why I don't get along too well with non-readers -- frankly, I feel sorry for them. How narrow and impoverished their inner lives must be.
Article from Rufus, Literacy Crusader Extraordinaire.
Anybody out there read any Heidegger? What's he good for? No, I'm not going to look him up on Wikipedia. And yes, I know he was a Nazi.
I wish my American public school education had been more rigorous. I wish there had been courses on the history of intellectual or philosophical movements, courses that would teach us how we came to think the things we think. Or just plain philosophy courses. All the history and social studies I learned seem to be, in retrospect, merely fiction. And honestly, I'm not sure what all the extra AP science and math courses I took in high school did for me. They taught me to think in a particular way...hey, I guess I should be glad that I learned to think at all, but I feel...impoverished somehow. I wish I'd been exposed to more. I feel cheated.
By the time I got to university, it didn't occur to me to learn these things. I didn't know their importance. I kind of wish someone had forced me to do it.
The idea that America is a classless society is bullshit. Not only do we have class, but we have nobility, apparently. That's my only explanation for why UT Austin will spend $100 million on its sports program this year, and people seem okay with this, and in fact want to emulate it.
No, the sports program doesn't take money away from the rest of the university (but it certainly doesn't share it) to
I went to a private university where the focus was actually on the quality of the education. But those values seem downright quaint now; who wants to hear about providing intangible social good these days? This Is What People Want. This is where they want resources to go. We now live in the Age of the Consumerist Nobility.
We Americans seem to think it's okay for CEOs to earn thousands of times as much as their employees, with multi-million dollar salaries and platinum-lined, diamond encrusted golden parachutes. Athletes stand astride us like Colossi -- having a gargantuan mega-athletic program has become de riguer for universities in this state and we're happy for our professional athletes to have sick-makingly generous contracts.
But who am I to complain? The Market Has Spoken.