A Question of Identity...

[mahf]

So much of the important stuff of life has to do with identity. We claim identities for ourselves, we hide them, admit to them, question which ones are real and which ones don't matter. We spend our lives negotiating with society to achieve certain identities, and much of our social interaction is spent confirming and reconfirming identities to

Comments

[lesliev]

Sounds like you want http://www.montessori.org. But as for the issue of whether degrees really are a good way for employers to choose employees, yes and no. I don't have a degree - and am I a good employee? Yes I am. I am studying a BSc, and do any of the subjects have any relevance to my work? No, not much. But a degree is used as a first selector to narrow down the many many people clamouring for a job, and it selects people who are obedient, dedicated to a cause over many years simply for the sake of authority, and willing to learn even irrelevant things. A degree means that you can play by the rules and colour in the lines and will not cause too much trouble.

They won't always get a visonary or a revolutionary but they will get a worker bee, and as Mr. Smith would tell you, that is what the corporation wants. The corporation does not have time to sift through thousands of applicants, and only visionaries and misfits seem to have a problem with this system.

Luckily though, the corporation does not choose who will be happy or fulfilled in this life - only (sometimes) who will have the money (but mostly they are choosing the employee to make *them* money). I have seen some of the poorest of the poor in Africa living the greatest lives just because they are filled with humility, joy and love. This is the fairness God has created: joy comes from loving, not being loved, it is the greatest prize and anyone can have it. The scripture is Jon 15:11-12.

[mahf]

What I'm saying is that its funny that we settle for easy, aggregate, "official" methods of identification rather than doing dirty work of figuring out for ourselves whether the person is going to be a good scientist, good editor, good advertising exec, etc.

Imagine we could get rid of two things: 1) capitalism's constant clamoring for as many mostly competent workers as we can create as quickly as possible, and 2) the public's outcry that everyone have an "opportunity" and the meaning of the word opportunity continually being driven higher, then people in education and the workplace might just think about quality rather than quantity. If so, a master of a trade/discipline might just have the time to get to know someone who wanted to learn from him and judge for himself whether the person was qualified rather than rely on some systematized way of judging who was competent that relied mostly on whether or not the student performs mostly well on tasks that may be completely irrelevant to the teacher's judgement of the student's ability.

Then when the student had learned from the teacher, they might find work for someone. But they'd have to demonstrate their expertise through their work, not by some certificate, because the employer would have the luxury of again actually getting to know this person and judging whether they have truly learned anything.

As it is, everything must be streamlined because we have to produce so much. As a result, we clearly sacrifice quality and we sacrifice the practice of actually learning to *be* a good engineer, editor, artist, what-have-you during our formative, educational years and save that for graduate/professional school, or early on in our career. It doesn't have to be that way, except for the pressure on society to produce so much so quickly.

Response

[lesliev]

Lesliev has a point. Apparently you have not grasped it. What you have in mind is some liberal idea as to how things should be. Things are the way they are because that is how they have evolved. Societies demands dictate these things and human nature plays a part as well. There are some 6 billion people on this earth, no? They already did the master/apprentice thing, and since then things have evolved. In a few situations the master/apprentice relationship still exists, but for the most part that would be a very inefficient way to go about training all the workers to meet society's demands. The diplomas and degrees followed by GPA and such are simply ways to narrow down perspective employees. Nobody in their right mind is going to go in search of an employee by getting to know them and their work and then hiring them that way. That would take a very long time. First they look at degree followed by GPA. GPA so high, good hired. Tells them you were dedicated enough to complete degree with decent GPA so you will mostly likely perform similarly at company. Then there is evaluation period with you as an employee. Teaching you how the company works and figuring how you fit in just exactly. You sink or swim.
As far as the streamlining, evolution once again. It does suck that many people simply go for the grade, and could care less about their studies. You do, however, learn much of what you need to ultimately know, to function in your position outside of school, on the job. School just prepares you to learn later and gives you a "hopefully" solid foundation upon which to build. Basically, "It all comes out in the wash." And yes, it is that way because that's how it is.

Re: Response

[lesliev]

I think that I did grasp his point as I do grasp yours. I am aware that these things are the way they are because they "evolved" as you say. They work very, very well for their purpose, which I would argue is efficiency. We want the most, best workers in the least time and energy and we want to be able to know that they are the most and best workers with as much certainty for as little cost as possible. Of course, there is the balance on the other side of not violating what we perceive to be human rights, and things of that nature. I don't mean to suggest that efficiency is the *only* goal, but I do mean to say that it is a large part what has caused this system to "evolve."

What I'm saying is I don't necessarily agree with that goal. I know to you that may sound "liberal" but I would have to disagree with your definition of that term, then. I'm suggesting that we lose something fundamental when we make that our goal, and its worth thinking about. What if we lived in a society that only took what was necessary, rather than continually taking more and more? If we weren't constantly borrowing against the future, we would no longer risk economic collapse if we slow down production. If that were the case, then I'd imagine our system of education would change pretty quickly, since quantity would no longer be such a big draw. Teachers could have the space and time to actually educate rather than indoctrinate. Teach people how to think rather than how to fit in well. The process for becoming whatever it is one would become would be much more human, I think.

There would be drawbacks. Not as much luxury, not as rapid scientific/economic/technological progress. But on the other hand, maybe people would be better people? Maybe they'd be happier? Maybe out societal structure would shape itself to meet the emotional and spiritual needs of the people in it and not just the physical ones. And maybe more people would be *good* at what they do and find joy in doing it, and fewer people would "live for the weekend" and feel like cogs from 9 to 5.

I know this all sounds pretty radical, but please try to understand what I'm saying before you attempt to assess my understanding of someone else's position.

Re: Response

[lesliev]

Well I don't know that we go so far as to violate human rights, but I do agree that we may lose something by making quantity our sole goal. In engineering however the Japanese for instance manage to graduate I think nearly 2 to 3 times the engineers the US does, and their education seems to be better in some respects as well. Look at the size of their population relative to ours. Perhaps teachers here should change teaching methods to "educate" more effectively. There is no way you will get the world to change drastically from its current state. Convince the rest of America to take only what is needed and give up luxury. That is almost against human nature as well as what is prized in this country. If we didn't make the rapid scientific/technological progress that we manage in this country we would face economic collapse. Slowing down production would be a monumental blunder. What are you going to do with all those people without jobs? Everyone would remain in university if we slowed everything down!

Re: Response

[mahf]

I agree we don't violate human rights, that's what I was trying to say. Obviously efficiency isn't our *only* goal, otherwise things would be a lot uglier than they are.

Actually, the only reason why slowing down production would lead to economic collapse is that we are constantly borrowing against the future; i.e. money doesn't represent real physical resources, it represents future production. So if in the future we don't *actually* have more goods, then loans never get repaid and the whole economic system collapses. If we stopped lending at interest and let money only represent goods that exist in the *present* then things would change a lot. We'd obviously end up with a lot more farmers and farms wouldn't be quite so efficient or dependent on technology. We'd obviously be able to pay a lot more attention to quality instead of quantity. It would no longer be considered a good thing to destroy land to get more food from it *right now*. It would no longer be worth it to destroy the future to increase production *right now.* It would also cease to be a benefit to buy from someone all the way across the country to save a few bucks.

The Japanese education system is definitely worth commenting on. They, unlike us, have a hardcore system of tracking, which means that only the kids who are most academically talented go onto what we would call high school. The others go onto technical school and apprenticeships, which in their culture is not as shameful a thing as it is here. It isn't considered "failing." This also makes teacher's jobs monumentally easier, as does the cultural respect that teachers get there as opposed to here. So yeah, I think there are a lot of ways that the japanese education system clearly works a lot better than ours, because its closer to dealing with the reality that not being good at school is not the same thing as not being good at life, and they have more freedom to focus on things that are useful and beneficial than we do here.

Re: Response

[lesliev]

Are you suggesting we go back to the dark ages? We grew out of a farming society for a number of reasons. We don't have a barter system any longer and as far as money representing goods in the present well you'd have to put a value on those goods somehow. Fewer goods equals higher per unit value. Not looking too good there. Money itself is only a promise really and it's very volatile. It does not represent goods in the present. It's a promise on gold in the reserve. I do not know very much about the present state of "borrowing against the future," but loans are usually made against something of equal value in the present (i.e. mortgages). One cannot possibly destroy the future. One can only deal with the present. As far as buying from across the country goes. Looks like your grocery store chains are going out of business if you halt that. This would cause quite a number of problems. Specialized businesses that probably actually practice what you would like to see in terms of apprenticeship and the likes would likely go out of business. The farms would have to be larger yes, but they'd also have to be more efficient and pretty dependent on technology in order to feed our populace. It's almost as though you are suggesting we return to a point from which we advanced long ago. I mean why stop at buying from across the country. What about imports? We are an import based society. Shut down trade with other countries? Looks like we won't be driving anywhere anylonger unless we drill Alaska or have a great deal of the products we currently have on store shelves. We would probably have a revolution after all is said and done. It makes very little sense to dream of returning to a past that we left long ago. It will not likely happen.

Re: Response

[mahf]

I'm suggesting that we used to have something that was sustainable, and succeeded at producing enough food and goods for everybody, and allowed communities to be relatively independent economically. But what I mean by borrowing against the future is this. If I take out a loan at interest, which is what our whole society does over and over again, that means that I am promising to take that money and make it into more money in the future. At a macroeconomic level, this means that production has to continually increase indepently of need. If production does not increase, we cannot pay back our loans, and we have economic collapse, even if we have an overabundance of goods. It makes no sense.

You say we cannot destroy the future. I say that's very naive. We do it all the time as our farming techniques become more and more focused on production now rather than sustainability. This makes little to no sense since our farming industry produces WAY more food than we buy, but the government buys up all the extra food. This is the only way we have under the present system to avoid economic collapse. The only way we can survive is to do things that destroy our ability to produce in the future.

We do rely heavily on imports, but it was not always so. There was a time when people knew the sensibility in creating communities that produced as much of what they needed as possible *within* that community.

I don't suggest shutting down trade with other countries altogether, but I do suggest being responsible. Why give other people so much political and economic power over ourselves? It goes against all sense. The only thing it satisfies is our continual desire for more and more, faster and faster with as little effort as possible. It is irresponsible and it is bound to collapse.

I think you should read a little bit about the oil issue you just pointed to. Is it really wise to continue relying so heavily on a fuel that 1) will soon cost energy to extract than can be extracted from it, and 2) makes the earth less and less habitable? You want to plug the hole by draining oil from somewhere else. Wouldn't it make sense to realize that eventually there will be nowhere left to get oil from, and find a way to survive without it?

We're destroying our water supplies, our farmland, our forests, we're burning up our fuel as if it can never run out. We're producing more and more food that is filled with more and more chemicals that is worse and worse for us. And you say we can't destroy the future. I sincerely hope you're right. But even if you are, it doesn't give us the right to be so greedy and callous about it. We need to remember that there are limits. We *can* use it all up, and we are well on our way. We need to learn to take just what we need, and be grateful for it and satisfied with it.

I know it aint' likely to happen on its own. But I say this stuff because individual people can make choices about how they live, and that makes a difference. And I have to try, because I would rather us slowly figure this out than have it thrust upon us in a catastrophe.