Our cars, the roads on which we drive, our houses and apartments, offices and restaurants, every chair, every shelf, every implement from our toothbrushes to our favorite coffee mugs: all of these things are the work of human hands. Some of these goods are the product of assembly lines, some the consequence of men and women of the trades who bring an array of skills to their tasks.

All of these people have an intelligence often hidden by the title of their occupation. A man in his early thirties I met only once worked in the paper mill in Canton, North Carolina. He spoke with the accent native to the hills where he lived and looked nondescript. During our conversation, however, he revealed he had bought a house at the age of seventeen – an uncle helped him with the financing – fixed it up, rented it out, and now owned upwards of twenty such houses. This same man was fascinated by the history of the American West, and used his summer vacations to visit such historic places as the Alamo and the Little Bighorn National Monument.

My son-in-law is a contractor, a skilled builder and maker of furniture. He is a bright man, quick on the uptake, who has read many of the great books and will soon be teaching Euclidian geometry in a private school. Many of his friends, both those who graduated from college and those who never attended, also work in the trades, and display an equal array of gifts aside from their jobs. Another woman in town, a homeschooling mom and a teacher in a local co-op, declined to college and instead became an auto mechanic.

Many young people, I suspect, labor under the expectations of others regarding their choice of a career. Bill’s parents encourage him to study medicine… but he loved his Scouting experiences and dreams of joining the U.S. Forest Service. Sally’s parents hope she’ll go into accounting and join the family business… but she imagines herself as a paramedic whirling around in an ambulance and saving lives.

In The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead: Dos and Don’ts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life, a book that should be read by young people everywhere, Charles Murray offers excellent advice on choosing a vocation. “Instead of trying to choose among specific careers,” he advises, “think first about the things you especially enjoy.” He then offers a sample list of such possibilities, such items as “You enjoy being outdoors,” “You enjoy solving puzzles,” “You enjoy security and predictability,” and “You enjoy risks.” Murray concludes with this injunction: “Once you have identified what things you instinctively enjoy, then start thinking about a career.”

The key to the “pursuit of happiness” in our work does indeed lie in discovering what we enjoy and then looking for ways to match those pursuits to a vocation.

“Two Thumbs up for the Trades,” by Jeff Minick

Vocational education, tech ed, voc ed

Mike Rowe

mikeroweWORKS Foundation

This manic need to get girls into science and technical fields is just wierd to me anyway, is there something inherently superior to these fields, or something shameful if girls just don’t care to go into them? Where’s the PSA bemoaning the lack of girls in welding and digging ditches?

The entire exercise is part of the latest feminist jag to get more women into fields they don’t seem terribly inclined to be part of, even if they have to be forced to. The idea that maybe, just maybe girls aren’t as interested in these areas seems to completely elude the people behind this stuff.

THE FRAGILE PRINCESS

Feminists seem to believe that girls are fragile and delicate little flowers, because they have apparently not been around real girls. Because the feminists who write are concentrated on the coasts, where your education pedigree and credentials are the most important thing EVER, most feminists have no clue about the real world.

Girls and young women who are interested in science and math pursue those as vigorously as they want, and indeed are encouraged far more than boys with similar inclinations.

And anyone who has spent any time around girls knows that they are not fragile and delicate little flowers. Go watch a co-ed soccer game played by talented teenagers and you will see that the girls are just as physical as the boys, but the girls are slower. Slower doesn’t make them any less physical or competitive.

Let’s encourage more girls to become welders where they can make real money. And ask the feminists to confine their moral preening and elitist perspective and advice to the wealthy neighborhoods where welders are way down the social scale.

Let’s encourage all boys and girls to Work Smart And Hard.

Who, us?!?

Nevertheless, every time feminists complain about normal women who refuse to identify themselves as feminists, it is claimed that “the negative view of feminism” as being an anti-male lesbian advocacy movement is a false stereotype rooted in ignorance. The same feminists, meanwhile, insist that one cannot oppose their radical gay agenda “unless you are part of the extremely extreme extremist right wing.” One almost wonders if these feminists have ever read any feminist literature, or even if they are capable of comprehending the logic of their own words.
. . .
A man who expresses romantic interest in a female has dehumanized her as a sex object, feminism tells us, and if this male expression of heterosexuality occurs in the workplace, the man is guilty of sexual harassment — he has violated her civil rights.

No such condemnation can be made of women expressing their lesbian interest in other women. In fact, any woman who objected to a lesbian’s sexual advances could be accused of homophobia — possibly violating the civil rights of her lesbian pursuer!

Sex Trouble: Radical Feminism and the Long Shadow of the ‘Lavender Menace’

Feminism to me was a lot of very unhappy women telling stories to each other about how they had been hurt. They were getting ready to change the world and I didn’t want to be in front of that train when it started rolling.

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Son Describes Abuse by Feminist Pagan Fiction Author

Continue reading ‘Feminists Seem To Believe that Girls are Fragile and Delicate Little Flowers Not Suited for Welding’ »

The Roe Effect, combined with way-too-high college tuition and fees for a lousy education, the resulting student debt, and underemployment of recent college grads is going to lead to many more colleges closing in the coming years.

A waning number of high school graduates from the Midwest is sparking a college hunt for freshman applicants, with the decline being felt as far away as Harvard and Emory universities.

The drop is the leading edge of a demographic change that is likely to ease competition for slots at selective schools and is already prompting concern among Midwestern colleges.

“You can’t create 18-year-olds in a lab,” said Brian Prescott, director of policy research at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education in Boulder, Colorado. “Enrollment managers are facing an awful lot of pressure that they can’t do much about.”

Denison University, in Granville, and the College of Wooster, both project about a 13 percent drop from within the state. Ohio residents make up about a quarter of Denison’s student body and about a third at Wooster. Denison and Ohio Wesleyan University have boosted travel outside the state to attract prospective students, especially in California and the Southwest.

Dwindling Midwest High School Grads Spur College Hunt

From April 2013: Colleges Struggling to Stay Afloat

Too many high school students are told they must go to college when many of them would be much better off getting trained in a 1 to 3 year program learning a trade or earning a certificate in a practical skill, like welding. See
– mikeroweWORKS Foundation
– Don’t Go to College Next Year
– Don’t Send Your Kids to College
– Edububble
– Phi Beta Cons

The moral preeners pushing college for everyone are elitists.

“Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.”
Milton Friedman

Leonard Read’s 1958 essay “I, Pencil” is among the most eye-opening and influential pieces of economic writing ever.

I, Pencil

Leonard Read

I, Pencil

Voluntary, spontaneous order. Free markets allow the greatest amount of cooperation among free individuals.

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Sir John Dalberg (Lord Acton) (April 1887)

I, Party Cup (hat tip Kids Prefer Cheese)

Work worth doing is work worth doing well. And much mundane work is worth doing. Work smart and hard.

Buy the poster here, and donate it to your local high school’s guidance office.

“Why do you people love the state so much? It doesn’t love you.”

Michael Munger

The “everyone must go to college” crowd is a cult. With a nice topping of pretension and moral preening.

If college is so expensive, why doesn’t it provide a truly stellar, unrivaled learning experience? Part of the reason is that very little of the exorbitant costs go towards educating. Only 21 cents out of every tuition dollar goes to instruction, according to Richard Vedder, Director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.

From a purely market-orientated standpoint, why wouldn’t colleges keep raising their prices, as long as people keep paying? Ursinus College increased its freshman class by 55% after raising its prices. William Cooper, president of the University of Richmond, said that he and his administrators increased tuition by 27% in 2005 because, by maintaining their lower tuition prices, they were “leaving money on the table,” and they did not want to be “the cheap school” anymore. Russell Osgood, president of Grinnell College (the richest liberal arts college in the country, with around $1.5 billion in its endowment), says that he and his administrators raised their tuition price by 5% because the school had “been motoring along for about 20 years at a tuition figure and fees that was about 10 percent below the average for our [competitors], and … being lower [wasn’t] doing great things for us.” It’s as if a school can be seen as better or more prestigious simply because it dares to ask for more.
. . .
But don’t dramatically higher prices make it more difficult for poorer students to attend a given college? They do, and that may be the idea. Colleges have vastly increased scholarship money for students in families earning $100,000 or more per year, but have relatively neglected scholarship increases for students from families earning just $40,000 or less. And it’s not just private colleges that offer this preferential treatment: the top 50 public colleges have recently increased aid to richer families by eight times more than the aid to poorer ones.
. . .
These sorts of practices border on the unethical because they follow a process in which students are encouraged to borrow as much as possible and pay expensive interest rates. Many colleges even own stock in student loan companies, allowing them to benefit even more from their students’ debt, and over half of all colleges are more likely to accept a student who shows an interest in attending. They know that the more enthusiastic a student is, the more willing they’ll be to pay a high price.

The best way to combat this, ironically, is by educating prospective students. Yet most students seem blissfully unaware of how the process works, and colleges have no incentive to encourage them to find out.

If this sounds nothing like the picture of college you have in your mind, you’re not alone. The word “college,” for many of us, conjures up feelings of integrity and learning, of expanding one’s knowledge and promise, and of a collaborative process by which the learned people in society help the next generation achieve what they did. But the reality is not so grand. Colleges are a business, and they have no qualms about doing what is necessary to extract as much from prospective students and their families as possible.

The First Person in My Family NOT to Go to College

I hear plenty about the corrupt hucksters on Wall Street, why aren’t we talking about the wealthy con artists in academia who turn absurd profits by convincing broke kids to bankrupt themselves?
. . .
Why do we send guys like Bernie Madoff to prison while the academic elite get away with gouging an entire generation to death?

Thank God I wasn’t college material

A trillion dollars in student loans. Record high unemployment. Three million good jobs that no one seems to want. The goal of Profoundly Disconnected is to challenge the absurd belief that a four-year degree is the only path to success. The Skills Gap is here, and if we don’t close it, it’ll swallow us all. Which is a long way of saying, we could use your help. . .

PROFOUNDLY DISCONNECTED

Bonus “taxes and frugality are for the little people” story:

Union bigwigs representing some of the nation’s lowest paid workers are holding their annual board meeting at one of Florida’s ritziest resorts just months after increasing membership dues.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents 1.4 million workers, is holding its annual board meeting at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort, where “Victorian elegance meets modern sophistication.”

Two-hundred-fifty union officials are attending the 11-day conference ending Jan. 25, although not all are staying at the Grand Floridian. Resort rooms start at $488 per night before taxes and can exceed $2,000 if officials opt for a two Bedroom Club Level suite.

Living Big on the Backs of Grocery Baggers

Continue reading ‘Corruption and the College Con’ »

The next time you are dealing with a mechanic, HVAC person, locksmith, plumber, electrician, any skilled tradesman or tradeswoman, ask them how much money they make. If your entire focus has been on “college”, you will be surprised.

Bring your passion to your work.

Profoundly Disconnected

Mike Rowe Foundation

Buy the poster and give it to your local high school!

1. I believe that I have won the greatest lottery of all time. I am alive. I walk the Earth. I live in America. Above all things, I am grateful.

2. I believe that I am entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nothing more. I also understand that “happiness” and the “pursuit of happiness” are not the same thing.

3. I believe there is no such thing as a “bad job.” I believe that all jobs are opportunities, and it’s up to me to make the best of them.

4. I do not “follow my passion.” I bring it with me. I believe that any job can be done with passion and enthusiasm.

5. I deplore debt, and do all I can to avoid it. I would rather live in a tent and eat beans than borrow money to pay for a lifestyle I can’t afford.

6. I believe that my safety is my responsibility. I understand that being in “compliance” does not necessarily mean I’m out of danger.

7. I believe the best way to distinguish myself at work is to show up early, stay late, and cheerfully volunteer for every crappy task there is.

8. I believe the most annoying sounds in the world are whining and complaining. I will never make them. If I am unhappy in my work, I will either find a new job, or find a way to be happy.

9. I believe that my education is my responsibility, and absolutely critical to my success. I am resolved to learn as much as I can from whatever source is available to me. I will never stop learning, and understand that library cards are free.

10. I believe that I am a product of my choices – not my circumstances. I will never blame anyone for my shortcomings or the challenges I face. And I will never accept the credit for something I didn’t do.

11. I understand the world is not fair, and I’m OK with that. I do not resent the success of others.

12. I believe that all people are created equal. I also believe that all people make choices. Some choose to be lazy. Some choose to sleep in. I choose to work my butt off.

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.
. . .
The first disadvantage of an elite education, as I learned in my kitchen that day, is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you. Elite schools pride themselves on their diversity, but that diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race. With respect to class, these schools are largely—indeed increasingly—homogeneous. Visit any elite campus in our great nation and you can thrill to the heartwarming spectacle of the children of white businesspeople and professionals studying and playing alongside the children of black, Asian, and Latino businesspeople and professionals. At the same time, because these schools tend to cultivate liberal attitudes, they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it. Witness the last two Democratic presidential nominees, Al Gore and John Kerry: one each from Harvard and Yale, both earnest, decent, intelligent men, both utterly incapable of communicating with the larger electorate.

But it isn’t just a matter of class. My education taught me to believe that people who didn’t go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren’t worth talking to, regardless of their class. I was given the unmistakable message that such people were beneath me.
. . .
The first disadvantage of an elite education is how very much of the human it alienates you from.

The second disadvantage, implicit in what I’ve been saying, is that an elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth.

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education: Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers (emphasis added)