Posted on 08/23/2016 7:18:34 AM PDT by rktman
If Donald Trump should win the presidency, I hope he will be able to prevail upon Mike Rowe to be his Secretary of Education and lead a desperately needed reform and restructuring of American education. For Rowe understands the serious harm being inflicted upon Americans by the worship of college as the essential first step into the workforce, and the utter disdain and lack of support for vocation skill training.
But Rowe’s vision is far greater. He also spots political bias, and on his Facebook page has written a delicious response to journalists who harp on Donald Trump’s base being “poorly educated.” It is the read of the day. Here is a fair use excerpt, but read the whole thing:
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
With only an AA degree, I made a far bigger yearly salary, tech-writing in telecommunications, than my sister who teaches and has a Masters.
My advantage was experience in electronics etc.
Let’s do the math for a four year degree in journalism from an elite journalism school: Tuition, $200,000; opportunity cost, $140,000: $340,000 in the hole at age 21.
Now let’s do the math for someone who get’s paid to learn a valuable skill (HVAC, electrician, auto mechanic, etc.) over that same four year period: Tuition, $0; income, $140,000: $140,000 in the pocket and $480,000 advantage at age 21 over the person with a BA degree in journalism.
Yup. My former union acquaintances gave me crap for “going over” and that I’d be sorry in the end. Uh, no. When the show closed, guess who had a whole lot better retirement and benefiets. And, as the end approached, my former buddies became more and more hateful and nasty. Gotta take care of yourself before you can take care of others.
I’ve known college graduates who were flipping burgers at mickey d’s or short order cooks at Denny’s.
I didn’t want to go to college, I was so sick of school I didn’t want to see another one. HAd a chance, it was yanked out from under me. But that’s another story...
I continued to educate myself, I probably have an education equivalent to at lest 6 years in college, maybe 8. Along the way, I learned to be a mechanic, carpenter, runa printing press ( but just barely), machinist, computer technician, photographer, amateur astronomer, amateur archaeologist, and have been a musician my whole life. I’ve built around 200 computers, repaired hundreds. As a machinist I was top machinist in the last 3 shops I worked for, at one point running parts that cost $8000 each and nobody else was allowed to touch them. As a carpenter I did finish work for 8 years, when Obama started killing jobs we had work lined up 4 months in advance, without ever making a phone call, only answering them. People were calling us with job offers, 4 months in advance...
And I don’t even have a high school diploma...My IQ is around 150, tested at 151 when I was about 7 or so. I started reading college level material when I was 10. I could read and understand Reader’s Digest when I was 5. Never missed a spelling word on a test, ever.
In navy boot camp they called me into a meeting to get a bunch of us to sign up for officer training. When I didn’t sign the sheet they passed around they called my name and 11 others. Told us to stay, everyone else could go. then they told us we 12 people had the highest test scores on the entire base, 20,000 recruits, and we were the ones they actually wanted for officers. That was the first time I ever found out what my potential intelligence actually was, and it floored me...just over 20,000 people here and I’m in the most intelligent 12? Speechless doesn’t describe it.
What always annoyed me is that high schools don’t teach students a thing about how to actually get along in the real world. Not a word about how to find a job, even where to look. So I got out of school, my parents screaming at me (literally) to go find a job, and I didn’t have the slightest CLUE how to go about it. Why do high schools ignore this? And that was in 1973. It’s only gotten worse since then, now the kids in school don’t even get anything that resembles an education.
Just look at facebook and twitter posts.
Plurals do not require an apostrophe. It’s two CARS, not two CAR’s. There is a difference between too, two and to. Few know it. Then and than have two different meanings. And spelling...don’t get me started...what’s really amazing is the text editor I’m using right now to type this post has an auto spell checker that puts a red squiggly line under all my typos. Ad I still see the most horrible spelling all over the Internet, when every time I type anything a spell checker is right there. Usually it just catches all my myriad typos, but occasionally I do miss the spelling too.
And people don’t bother to use it? Education now is a farce, if I could afford it I wouldn’t even think about college. I thought public education was bad when I was in school...that’s why I didn’t want any more of it. what I see now is absolutely horrible, high schools are handing out diplomas to total illiterates. Forget about college, you don’t need it to begin with and these days it basically sucks anyway. OK if you want to be a nuclear physicist, maybe you should think about Harvard...I’ll give in that much...
I’ve known college graduates who were flipping burgers at mickey d’s or short order cooks at Denny’s.
From what I’ve seen of our so-called higher education system they are probably well suited for these jobs. I’m sure that after a months training they might be able to do the job.
LOL! Yup. But sad to say, you apparently fall short of the lyin’ king’s “iq”. Somebody (no source required of course) mentioned that the lyin’ king’s “iq” is almost immeasurable. I certainly can’t find any evidence of one I can put a number on. :-)
I pulled the same quote...
My daughter-in-law graduated from UNM 18 months ago magna cum laude with a double major in psychology and criminology.
She is a receptionist at a day care.
SMH. She probably has a hefty school loan debt, too.
Here in New Mexico we have the lottery scholarship, so if you keep your grades up, you get your tuition paid for. She lived at home, so no debt. She is actually kinda freaky about staying out of debt, to the point where she is hesitant to buy a house because she doesn’t want a mortgage.
She had been approached by the FBI to apply, but then is told that the FBI now requires 5 years of “real world” employment before they will consider hiring you.
After a good month’s training...
I got a good laugh out of that one. And you’re probably right, that’s the scary part. I learned to build a computer at age 45 in about a month without a High School diploma or formal training. These idiots probably needed at least 2 weeks to learn to cook a burger...which I could do when I was 8. Hell, I was making bread before I got out of high school...and could clean and oil any fishing reel made and most guns, played every instrument in the band room, and had already read at least 300 books. These people can barely spell library, I doubt most of them could use a card catalog if they had to.
Anyway Rowe has a very accurate outlook. I’ve learned everything I can do by on the job training. I got one job in the 80’s by telling the owner I didn’t know a thing about it but give me a month and I would show him I was willing to learn it. Got my first raise in 30 days, only person to ever work for the place to get a raise before 90 days.
That’s the kind of thing Rowe is implying when he says you can do it if you try. And if someone gives you a chance...without an expensive formal education.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.