Stay in school

Just finished reading a George Carlin book my mommy gave me for Chanukah. S'called "When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?" It's pretty good; not his best stuff, if you ask me, but pretty funny nonetheless. He takes on the normal topics -- euphemisms and politically-correct lingo get a thorough Carlinizing, as well as random topics like scabs and toenails. Anyway, in the spirit of George Carlin, here's a little rant about something that I thought of on the way to work this morning...

All throughout the first 23 years of your life, people are yelling at you to "stay in school". Parents, teachers, DARE officers, pro athletes, cartoon characters, you name it. We hear "stay in school" or "knowledge is power" or "education is the key to success". Then you get a little older and it's "go to college", "get a degree", "study hard", and so on. School, school, school, 24 / 7, from every direction. Everybody's telling you to go to or stay in school.

Which is all well and good, but they're forgetting something. See, the emphasis shouldn't be on staying in school and getting so much education that your brain explodes. Here's why; here's the big secret they're trying to hide from you but is obvious to anyone who's endured that much schooling: school isn't that interesting. It's true. It's a tool, a means to an end. But that gets forgotten in the stay-in-school frenzy. School becomes the end itself. Which, you know, is kind of a problem, since you do actually have to leave school eventually (unless you go into academia). When that happens, you've been so focused on staying or getting into school, you haven't really thought about what you're going to do when you get the $150,000 piece of paper saying that you're now more educated than any of the losers you went to high school with.

Which is really why they want you to stay in school so long -- to stay out of the workforce until you're 23. It gives those aforementioned losers with GEDs the chance to work 4 years at the company you're now applying to (entry-level position, of course -- everyone's gotta start somewhere!) and become your boss.

Ain't that a bitch?