Sealion II

"Education" is often equated to "job preparation" in contemporary thought. The reader will probably have already realized that I do not much like this definition.

"To get a job" ranks high--in my opinion, probably highest*--on the list of answers to "Why did you go to college?" There is nothing wrong with learning a skill and becoming more employable (quite the contrary); but "getting a job" and "getting an education" are quite different, and a institution which is dedicated to the first most, of necessity, put less emphasis on the second. There was a time when one prepared for a career as a lawyer by working as a law clerk, learning the practicalities of legal practice, then becoming a barrister or solicitor, and finally (if desired) a judge. To become a naval officer, one went to sea at twelve; if one were to be a skilled laborer (a blacksmith, for example) the plan was more or less the same.

We now use "school" for all these things, at a much later point in the person's life, and consider it a part of "getting an education", whereas before it would have been considering "apprenticeship" and "learning a trade." The conflation of the two is not necessarily pernicious, but it does tend to obscure the difference between "schooling" and "apprenticeship" and make it more difficult to understand what education is.

EDIT: *Here I meant to say that "I think a plurality of people would give this answer", not that this is the best answer to the question!

Beauty pageant contestants are by no means the only people expected to have educated opinions; we see movie stars and rock musicians wandering the earth in support of various causes, with varying amounts of attention and diligence.

In this context it is well to remember the maxim, produced by a wise person whose name I do not remember, that the less mainstream the position, the more likely that the person actually supports it strongly; hence of the many rockers who turned up for Live Earth, relatively few are truly concerned about global warming, but Ian Anderson probably really is worried about the declining population of the Andean Mountain Cat.

The problem here is not so much with the movie and rock stars; some of them really have thought about the problems they want to address and really cared about solving them. Some don't, of course, but the illusion of caring is almost as good as really caring for the purposes of celebrity endorsement. It should also be noted that it is not only movie stars who stick their oars in on subjects outside those that made them famous; Nobel laureates are also notorious for this sort of thing, although they tend to work more by treatise and letter to the editor than by photo-op, since more people want to read what they've written and fewer want to look at them.

The more important question is--why do people care about celebrity endorsement of causes at all? Do we need Bono to tell us that sub-Saharan Africa is mired in poverty, war, plague, and general misery? Do we need him to tell us this is a very bad thing? Do we need him to tell us what to do?

If we do, the first is a failure to be factually educated, and the second a failure to be morally educated. For the third, macroeconomics is not really Bono's first area of expertise, which should make us skeptical; but even if it were, a host of experts with differing opinions could easily be found. How are we to evaluate Bono's plan, and those of other economists and humanitarians?

To do that, we need to know what ends are desirable (moral education), what has been attempted in the past (historical or factual education) and what that means for our present endeavor (rational education).

See? We did come back to education. Next question: what is education anyway?

Miss Teen South Carolina (see comments to Today's Project) is a good example of a person who may have failed even to achieve half-education. (In fairness to her, it's easy to get flustered when the adrenalin is flowing, but it was still a pretty dismal showing.) Even half-education should at least prepare one to give an answer related to the question asked; she obviously had prepared herself to comment on South Africa (why?) and Iraq (obvious why) and felt obligated to work them in, even though the question put to her had nothing to do with either country.

The beauty-pageant phenomenon is an interesting example of an underlying premise of American education, previously mentioned; we expect everyone to be "educated". (What "educated" means is not usually discussed; it should be, and will be later, because it's one of the central problems of the overarching problem.) Beauty pageant contestants are generally associated with, well, beauty (another ambiguous and fraught term, but one which will remain unexamined at the present time). Generally, the attraction of these competitions is looking at unusually good-looking women in revealing clothing; however, it is also demanded that the contestants show that they can do more than apply makeup. Hence the question put to Miss Teen South Carolina, and the exhibition of "talents". and so forth. The contestants have to be more than just good-looking; they should be able to comment intelligently on, say, American education, or the war in Iraq, or Federal Reserve policy and the housing bubble, or what have you. So much the better; insofar as it reflects a real cultural priority, honoring intelligent and well-spoken women is a very good thing. Part of the problem, however, is that it is not usually a real priority. One will never see a plain woman as Miss America; one might well see a badly-educated woman in the role. Intelligence and education serve as window-dressing or ancillary accomplishments to the real "accomplishment"--being physically beautiful.

*reviews*

I think I'm losing the thread here a bit, but onward and upward! Tomorrow--it's not just beauty pageant contestants, and what good is it to be educated anyway?

The educational essay has gotten away from me a bit. It'll take a while to finish.

In the meantime, does the faithful reader (dare I hope there is more than one?) have topics they desire for future essaying?

Write a short essay on the Horribility of American Education.

It may not be entirely fair to say that America's people are badly educated, but the fact is that many of us are; America must have more half-educated people than have existed in any nation at any prior time.

This is partly because America is so big, and so ambitious in its educational scope; we actually say (and believe) that every American can and should be educated to some minimal standard, including functional literacy and numeracy, which would have been a jaw-droppingly weird idea at any time up to the present. There are other countries that aspire to this same goal, but all of them are smaller in population and more homogeneous in culture (both of which make it a lot easier, for reasons we will not go into at present).

It is also because "education", in America, has come to mean "job preparation", which would be another jaw-droppingly weird idea at any time up to, say, the introduction of the GI bill or thereabouts. Literacy and numeracy were entirely superfluous to making a living until recently; America's transition to an information and service economy is partly a result and partly a cause of the education/job preparation confusion.

To Be Continued.