On Education and Getting a Degree
Last night, I got down on education a bit. I would like to apologize for that, especially if it came across negative about getting an education. It's a good thing to pursue a degree, so don't get me wrong on that
For me, the issue of education right now is bittersweet. I grew up with all the positives of it with both my parents having been teachers. In fact, three of my grandparents, and several of my aunts were teachers. So it's not like I hadn't had a good idea what education is all about. I knew about the politics that happen with it, and much of the not so great aspects that come with it too. Some of it I also came to understand first hand when I was a substitute teacher for about 4 years, and then tutoring through Regional Service Corps for about a year and a half. I loved being in the classroom, among the kids, and especially when I was those flickers of thought that went in them when you could see them authentically curious and interested in learning.
College, I had a wonderful experience there. Being able to play in musical ensembles, ranging from classical to jazz, and going to the Rose Bowl with the Cougar Marching band, I mean, you really can't call all that a bad experience. That was all fun, and icing on top of the education I received there to get a BA in Liberal Arts. Further, I was told that there was much that could be done with such a degree, and got this impression that jobs would be lining up after graduating.
The trouble is, I never could understand what happened to all these jobs that were promised.
It took nearly a year to get my first job in retail, which was only temporary, since it was a friend of a friend deal, and the store owners themselves were looking to close by the end of that summer. But, it helped out for the time being, until all cleared with my certificate I needed to be able to substitute teach. Once I got there I figured it was just a matter of patience and going back to school to get my MA in Education, and take the required exams to get the full teaching certificate. After 4 years, patience was hard to keep, and part of it may have been with living with my parents who were anxious for me to move on, but yet I felt like I was in between a rock and a hard place because, as far as I considered it, the only way I could move on was to get my MA and get certified, and that wasn't looking to happen soon enough.
So, that summer or 2008, I took a step back and started looking into my options. Eventually I came across Regional Service Corps. I figured, great, I could do some sort of help in the community, and maybe the tutoring might help me keep the education experience under my belt as I try to figure out what I really want to do with my life.
But that's probably the main thing. Trying to understand my niche, where it is I wanted to be in life and how I want to go about getting there. I still am not sure what I want to do, and keep considering between teaching, writing, maybe marketing, and I still don't know if there is a calling to the monastic life, or maybe a priest. I really don't know, and I keep hitting a lot of road blocks that make it difficult to decide. I hesitate to go back to college because I don't have much money beyond the little my parents can help with. Having already received a BA, much of the FAFSA stuff that was often denied to me in the past anyways, is pretty much out of the picture as well. So, it returns back to jobs.
Regardless, it always returns back to jobs and finding the right employment. Problem is, this is not a job seeker's market. Most of the bargaining power is with the employers. It's not like we can afford nowadays to say, "Ok, crappy jobs, I'll just work on the farm," or, "I'll just help out in the family business for a while, and see if anything better comes along." A good majority of us do not have such luxuries as a family farm or business that we can fall on. As it is, a good majority of family farms and businesses had, for many previous decades, been bought out by the larger farms and businesses. It's not that there aren't local businesses and farming, but they have become few and far between. This is unfortunate since these are the homesteads of the past that allowed people to have a certain amount of economic freedom and flexibility to be able to withstand harder times in a recession or depression.
This is something that I am tired of seeing get ignored in the topics of education and jobs, which is the whole issue that we make it near impossible for a good many people to start up quality local businesses that could enrich the community and provide for those sorts of fall back homestead estates for people. Or, if not a physical estate, then why not something like Capital Homesteading, where people can gain a certain share in the profit of their labor, rather than fixed to the minimum wage, which only rigs things so that the laborer becomes little more than another tool in the hands of the owner of the business. I would rather be a partner in making the profit than a 'valuable asset', or a cog in the wheel. It is that very dehumanizing aspect in general labor that leads to Communism, for the less a human is valued for being a person, and just becomes nothing more than one part or parcel in the corporate entity, you no longer have a capitalist notion, but factory of comrades that wield people and political power and corporate control not much different than a dictator in a Communist state. It's almost a sick joke that our big corporations claim to be defenders of Communism when they are the ones that spread the seeds for it. They already have done what Communism set out to do in destroying the family unit and its capital that allowed for private ownership and freedoms for the masses through buying up all the small farms and businesses, then further consuming the spread out private capital among them through the addiction that came to people with consumerism and loyalty to big business company brands. Who needs party loyalty when you can get people going coo coo for Cocoa Puffs? Wars? Just get people to fight over Coke or Pepsi. Or addicted to the numerous fighting and virtual military games. We pretty well used our so-called free market to rig it to where war on poverty means a war on the middle class and the struggling poor to have upward mobility.
But education should allow for this upward mobility to happen, right? If you think about it, some of the biggest companies today weren't started by people known for being all that smart. Or, to put it another way, we wouldn't say that the intelligence they have is one that comes from a liberal education. Sure, there are business degrees, but Bill Gate himself admits to dropping out of college to pursue the creation of Microsoft. Steve Jobs built Apple out of a garage and, at best, he signed up for elective courses, but didn't pay for college. Their education wasn't purely from college. The same is true of Henry Ford who might of had a high school diploma at best. It isn't until probably about the 1970's that earning a degree and putting time and money into certificates for work started to become relevant as means to gain certain white collar employment. A lot of the paper trail we need for jobs is all about the politics of control, centralized control, which is pretty much bearing down on us and leading to the very place we are now. And it's all created catastrophe that could have all been avoided if we didn't put national and big business security issues ahead of the needs of local communities and what particular things they seek to help them manage their own individual polities. Sadly, centralized government and commerce, which makes such a big issue out of communism and socialism, are the very things that are leading us more and more into a serfdom under socialize communism.
But how do we get out of this? That is one of a variety of questions that, if we could answer it, we would start to find the way to the freedom we truly desire. Part of it is to counter the destruction that big, centralized business and government have done to our economy and to our individual family and community polities. We have to seek ways to revive and reform homesteading that suit our current and future communities. For we can't consider the future without having forming the foundation for it in the present. We can't put things into action in the future, but we can plan for it and start planting seeds and forming foundations that will start to grow into that future. This will be a difficult task, but, with the right planning and people, we can counter the culture that uprooted us from our past principles of homesteading and bring out the provisions to make possible a new principle with the capital needed to help it thrive. But we have to first start building up this future, and learning ways to develop this capital. For who knows, maybe we could be the next garage business to reshape the world. It starts with finding that potential niche and then working out how to make it form into a reality. Easier said than done. But never done if it is never spoken, and certainly if no actions are taken to put things in motion.
And if you truly need education, make sure you put some thought in what you are looking to learn from the education.Also see on if it's required, and whether or not what you're looking into is not already available somewhere free, or for less personal expense online. We can feel sorry for the plight of centralized education, but we can't let pity lead us to let them drain us of not only our money, but the freedom of our very souls. So choose your education wisely.