I was one of those oddballs who entered a five year program just because I was interested in the field.

Never intended to become a practicing architect, just loved the discipline of it.

We are presently torturing students and parents and teachers with a conviction that everyone who doesn't go to college is a failure.

As long as we hold to this false value, we'll be condemning graduates to debt and disappointment, even as we lower the self-esteem and status of those who don't particularly see college as a useful endeavor.

What a fucked up world.

Solely for the purpose of "getting a job".

It doesn't even make good politics for Democrats to do this, since people who hate the idea of everyone getting the chance to have a life of the mind are never going to vote for any Democratic candidate anyway. We don't get the "I hate people who think too much" voters...and we shouldn't TRY to get them.

El Perro grande was never a big defender of higher education for higher education's sake-at least not when he was president and it actually mattered.

You'd think they'd remember that we do better as a party when the country values education and praises people who try to grow a soul.

why so many white Americans hate President Obama. He sounds like a typical college educated smart guy talking down to "real Americans" like George Bush and Sarah Palin. He actually sounds like English is his first language.

Some studies show that approximately 40% of Americans are functionally illiterate. That 40% could include the people who cannot identify the current Vice-President, the people who think the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence are communist documents, and the people who feel that Jesus gave this country to white people to establish a white Christian theocracy.

My view.

Or maybe it is because most of them aren't very bright or don't have much intellectual curiosity themselves.

developed at the state level and were tweeked to produce the outstanding results they did. Remember this,most of our so Dems in D.C. come from Ivy League Schools. In saying that,Elitism runs rampant against Midwest School Systems. Let the Ego's roar seems to be there motto. Arnie Duncan is a example of what I refer to. Met this guy years back at a School Educators and concerned parents round table. What a total condescending asshole. That is being polite. At the time he was promoting his so called Core Curricula Project,did not go to well for the Duncan,did not hear or see anyone willing to even bit that farce of a program.

and it's a BIG problem. (Includes current administration's miserable education 'secretary,' and apparent point of view.)

LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND SHOULD have been Secretary.

Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford University, was an adviser to President Barack Obama during his first presidential campaign. She helped craft his education program and was considered an early candidate for education secretary (the position went to Arne Duncan). One of the pre-eminent authorities on education, she has advocated for school restructuring, education equity and improvement in teacher development.

something of that kind of cost absolutely must have nitty-gritty practical application and that mentality transfers to their broader view when it is the state or the nation's millions and billions.

These are folks that can be sold on outsourcing their own jobs, starving people, and allowing bridges to fall down.

Not for hostility to education for education's sake.

doesn't already agree with that sentiment.

More that what you describe in that post could actually be used to make a case for a radical policy, rather than the essentially conservative "education is just get a job" thing-if only our party's leaders had the stones to make it(and also to make the case that education for education's sake is something that everyone could take part in, rather than having to be reserved for an elite).

from you.

Educating the labor force doesn't (beyond certain marginal threshholds) change the jobs available. When we train more engineers, engineers make less, because there's only X amount of engineering people will pay to have done.

In terms of the idea of education preparing students to live as free citizens in a Republic, I'm afraid that ship sailed with Dewey's reforms.