“There was a time when good academic qualifications guaranteed a job, but not any more. One reason is academic inflation. In the next 30 years, more people worldwide will be gaining academic qualifications than since the beginning of history. But as more people get them, their currency value is falling sharply. A university degree used to be an open sesame to a professional position. The minimum requirement for some jobs is now a Master’s degree, even a PhD. What next? But there is a second problem. Many companies are facing a crisis in graduate recruitment. It’s not that there aren’t enough graduates to go around; there are more and more. But too many don’t have what business urgently needs: they can’t communicate well, they can’t work in teams and they can’t think creatively. But why should they? University degrees aren’t designed to make people creative. They are designed to do other things and often do them well. But complaining that graduates aren’t creative is like saying, “I bought a bus and it sank”.
Category Archives: Res publica
16-year-olds are people too?
“There is a natural and accepted view that one of the main purposes of education is to prepare young people directly for a place in the labour market. Obviously, general education should do this. But there are two complications. First, thinking of education as a preparation for something that happens later can overlook the fact that the first 16 or 18 years of a person’s life are not a rehearsal. Young people are living their lives now. What they become and what they do later depends on the attitudes and abilities they develop as they are growing up. Linear assumptions about supply and demand can and do cut off many potentially valuable and formative experiences on the grounds of utility.”
Merton on Materialism, or, Merry Christmas to All
Now that you’re probably basking in the post-Christmas pile of, well, stuff, (as we are) here’s a little Merton to make you feel good about it all. Or not. If you don’t want to possibly feel guilty or depressed, don’t read on.
Louisiana Sweet Oranges…or not
My heart is broken. The six (and only six) oranges left on the tree we planted last year are gone. We weren’t really expecting any the first year, so we were really excited when we had a ton of buds, then hundreds of tiny green oranges, which diminished slowly until eight were left. Two split and we removed them. And when I went to check the one that had started to turn yellow this morning, they were all gone. Even the ones in a bunch that I contrived a pvc-and-rag contraption to hold up since they were too heavy for the little orange tree branches.
They Must be Bored
This is the email I received from one of our senators today:
“Dear Friend,
I was outraged when I found out the Obama Administration wanted to give Guantanamo Bay detainees the H1N1 vaccine while millions of Americans – including pregnant women and children – are still waiting to get the H1N1 vaccine because of massive shortages.
Business of Being Born
This is a movie worth seeing. For me, it pulled up a lot of good and bad memories, and I could just watch babies being born all day. It’s really amazing to see. I tend to gasp when this squirming little one suddenly comes out, even though I know it’s coming.
Anyway, if I knew someone who thought they didn’t have time to research birth choices, I would recommend this movie, and hopefully by the end of it they would realize they had to find time to do this sort of reading and research. I found the discussion of the difference between the artificial hormones doctors use to induce labor and the natural hormones women get for and from labor particularly interesting.
Man’s Power over Nature?
“Let us consider three typical examples: the aeroplane, the wireless, and the contraceptive. In a civilized community, in peace-time, anyone who can pay for them may use these things. But it cannot strictly be said that when he does so he is exercising his own proper or individual power over Nature. If I pay you to carry me, I am not therefore myself a strong man. Any or all of the three things I have mentioned can be witheld from some men by other men–by those who sell, or those who allow the sale, or those who own the sources of producion, or those who make the goods. What we call Man’s power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by. Again, as regards the powers manifested in the aeroplane or the wireless, Man is as much the patient or subject as the possessor, since he is the target both for bombs and for propaganda. And as regards contraceptives, there is a paradoxical, negative sense in which all possible future generations are the patients or subjects of a power wielded by those alread alive. By contraception simply, they are denied existence; by contraception used as a means of selective breeding, they are, without their concurring voice, made to be what one generation, for its own reasons, may choose to prefer. From this point of view, what we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercied by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”
As Promised…
Here is the letter I sent to NPR. I actually had to break it into two for the emails, because of the 6,000 character limit, but I think that may have actually helped each topic to recieve proper focus. I don’t really expect anything to come of this, but there is this tiny hope that they’ll read a couple of lines of mine on air. Mine, instead of the thousands of other comments they get each week. I can dream, right?
Anyway, if you are wondering what I’m talking about, read the previous post and the links in it, and hopefully you’ll see why I thought I should say something. So after all the stalling, here it is…
I’m a person, not a “childbearing goal”
Just in case anyone was unsure.
Sometimes NPR makes me sad. These two stories ran back to back on Monday, and I’m trying to decide which part to focus my angry/disappointed/how can people really think this way?! letter on. (The text on the page is not the same as the story that you’ll hear if you click the “Listen Now” button at the top – they cut whole paragraphs, but actually come out as two significantly different stories.)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103211630
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103270766
Gaza
I was listening to NPR just now, and they reported that today nine people were killed in Gaza by Israeli bombs, and five of those nine were children. ? My stomach sinks when I think of that. ? I don’t know, and honestly I barely care, who is right here. ? How can it possibly ever be justified to kill children? ? Calling them “collateral damage” ? is not only no excuse, it is an insult to the suffering these families must endure! ? How can you tell a mother that her child’s life is less important than your border dispute, that his life is an acceptable sacrifice? ? I try sometimes to put myself in the place of these mothers. ? I cannot even imagine their pain! ? My prayers, more often than I would like lately, have been turned toward these suffering women. ? May God lead us to end this violence!
