An Over-Educated Generation and its Discontents

[mcgillianaire]

I've just handed in the following essay as part of my Academic Writing course at Harvard's Extension School. It culminates a six week process of cumulative work, that began with three assigned readings on aspects of education. We had to pick one of the three readings and build our exercises around it. The essay below is my final product. I hope you

Comments

[jhall1]

I think intelligence and knowledge are two very different things. Intelligence is innate - though how well one applies it to solve problems can be helped with teaching on how to think logically - whilst knowledge has to be learnt. It annoys me when quiz shows such as "Fifteen to One" are promoted as finding the most intelligent people, when what they actually do is find the most knowledgeable. Wikipedia's article on "savant syndrome" might interest you

[mcgillianaire]

Thanks for your comments! I agree, intelligence and knowledge are different things, but they certainly interact with each other. And thanks for pointing me in the direction of "savant syndrome". I hadn't heard of it before!

As far as remuneration is concerned, I'd draw a distinction between pay based on effort and pay based on inherit "worth" to society. Either way, we don't necessarily need to adopt communism to manipulate human behaviour if democratically-elected governments use the levers of public policy to regulate markets - as they often do already (eg. mandatory minimum wage; progressive income tax bands etc). Rather than wholesale changes, minor tweaks can modify human behaviour. The problem is, democratic governments are generally averse to applying such measures due to the power of private monied interest groups. As Sir Humphrey Appleby would say, it would take a courageous or bold minister to do so.