COLUMN: "Education: Who Needs It?"

From George Allen, Jr.'s "Hey You Kids, Get Off My Lawn," Spring '92.From George Allen, Jr.'s "Hey You Kids, Get Off My Lawn," Spring '92.· Realistically, most of formal education is a waste of time -- but unfortunately it is required. Just try to get a job by writing "self taught" on an application. Hell, you need an associate's degree to pick gum off the seats at the mall. Have you ever asked why this is? Why do we have to pay $20,000 per year to hear some loon-ball badmouth America? Is this truly an education? Is this actually useful? Through education, we have created a society where everyone without a degree thinks they're a loser and their dreams cannot be realized without the "help" of formal education -- and, of course, the help of our tax dollars. I feel education and its benefits have been hyped up to unprecedented levels and that most of it is actually unneeded. One must first ask in whose interest is education. The intellectuals purport that formal education is important both to the individual and society. Moreover it is important for some individuals, namely intellectuals, and to some societies, namely the National Education Association and the excessive number of publicly-funded, generally useless universities in this country. Within formal education we see courses like "Penises and Orgasms: A Study of Peruvian Highland Women Peasants Who Think All Men Are Jerks." In the debate about the usefulness of such courses, few intellectuals argue for cutting federal and state funding as a way to eliminate such curriculum. This would decrease the number of universities while increasing the quality of those that remain, reduce our taxes, and eliminate most of the really annoying intellectuals. This will never happen. Will we ever hear an intellectual say, "God, I'm a burden on the economy, why don't I get a real job." This is like seeing a lawyer advocate simpler legal procedures or seeing someone in Congress decide to quit ripping off the taxpayer by stepping down. It happens very rarely. The fraternity of the upwardly mobile, unlike the fraternity of the intellectuals, is easy to enter. In the era of the uneducated "robber barons," education was mostly self-taught and practical. It was not difficult for someone with ideas and inner drive to succeed. The intellectuals could not stand this, because they believe they are superior to the unclean, uneducated, uncultured money-grubbing masses that need enlightenment via education. Personally, I find it repugnant to assume that people are some sort of "Handyman's Special" or fixer-upper that can easily be renovated in order to fit into intellectual society. "Just give him some Marx and some white paint and he'll be just like us. Well, maybe . . . " This assumes that the upwardly mobile drug dealer, because he did not complete formal education, is not a successful, intelligent entrepreneur, but a failure. If he had gone to an exclusive private school, rather than dropped out of school, he would be "saved." How many of us, with our big shot Ivy League degrees, have jobs? Who is smarter? Ask Alexander Moskovits if he was smarter or "saved" by his Penn education when he gets out of jail for dealing coke. Fortunately, some formal education is not completely useless. As exemplified by finance and accounting majors, engineers, nurses, dentists and doctors, some things taught in universities are practical and actually improve the economy. Actual scholars who realize the irrelevance of much of their work to the rest of us -- and don't expect us to subsidize them -- should also be applauded. They are the type of folks who keep the intellectuals from taking all our money and shipping us off to concentration camps. These modest "unenlightened" scholars, like honest politicians, are hard to find nowadays. On the other hand, those enlighted intellectuals who think their accumulation of inherently useless knowledge should be paid for by a government and society restructured to accomodate them should be forced to get a real education. They should get a real job. · George Allen, Jr. is a senior Intellectual History and Political Science major from Alderwood Manor, Washington. Hey You Kids, Get Off My Lawn appears alternate Wednesdays.