College Brainwashing?

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

In high school, they heavily stress college. If you don’t go to college, you won’t be successful. They give you statistics to show how much larger a percentage will get a high paying job by going to college.

My question is how true this really is? I’ve long thought this to be a hoax, and so I did what any skeptic would do: I set out to prove it.

I’ve decided to live my life against the grain. I listen to rap, I grew up in the lower middle class, and I went to college for one semester until I realized how many saps go, not because they thirst for education, but because they’re brainwashed into thinking it’s the only path of success.

I disagree, and my life is dedicated to proving the stats wrong. I guess I find it somewhat depressing that the only thing I had to do was make the choice to be successful without college, a choice so many don’t realize they have. Your thoughts? Specifically, your thoughts on why college is force fed to high schoolers as the path to success, which is completely the wrong reason to go to school if all one is concerned about is finance.

2

Well, the sad fact is that businesses will not take you particularly seriously if you do not at least have a degree. Essentially, college has become a place to “mold the working force into taking orders” by and large I’d say.

I started college and become disenchated very quickly with what qualified as “education”. Everything was crammed and nobody seemed to be learning anything that endured for longer than it took to take the test. It was, quite basically, a short term memory cramming session tinged with attempting to figure out what it is the teacher wanted.

I thought perhaps I was mistaken in this assumption until I started talking to people in my field and realized very quickly a disturbing fact: They didn’t know shit. Even the ones who did well did not know shit. On the contrary, knowing shit was actually detrimental–which is why I suspect most adults don’t go back into college. They already know how to think.

The working world does not want someone who “knows” things I’ve found. They are far more interested in a piece of paper. Without it, it is very difficult to get anywhere unless you happen to have someone with big purse strings behind you.

I’m about to go back to college, actually. I’m not really looking forward to the prospect, but I’ve spent quite a bit of time where you are, and in the location that I happen to be in, the jobs are hardly there for those who have the credentials, let alone those who do not.

High schools hammer in the doctrine because it is by and large true: if you want to have a higher chance of success, you should go to college. Success here is defined as having financial security.

Good luck to you though, doorky. Maybe you’ll find some avenue that wasn’t open to me.

3

Thank you for the well wishes, I definitely appreciate it. :smiley:

I agree it is largely true, but is it true because it is a self fulfilling prophecy? They tell you a diploma is needed, then a diploma actually is needed for most people?

I currently work for a broker-dealer. I’m fairly confident I’m the only one here who is 21 and doesn’t have a degree in anything.

The door never opens by itself…you have to take charge and open it. I don’t think enough people try to find their own door.

4

If you are asking do you need a degree to do job X in a perfect world, then I’d say no. You can often become better educated on your own. The problem is people don’t often recognize “self-educated” people.

If you can get the experience in for long enough, you might be able to bypass the degree. However, if something unexpected happens, I’ve found that it proves to be very difficult to get another job unless you know somebody who knows somebody.

Maybe not. For my part, I started my own business. I’ve done freelance work, and I’ve attempted to get jobs at various places for graphic design and computer repair and some programming which is what I happen to do freelancing. My own business failed in large part as the result of my now Ex, the freelance work is far and few between, and the jobs for computer work around here are scant.

I have a fairly decent resume I think with all these things combined. Running your own business by itself is pretty tough and gains you a lot of experience. However, I’ve been met with apathy continually. So far not even phone tech support places have shown a mild interest. It’s all about credentials for better or for worse. I think they are unnecessary to do a job, but society thinks otherwise, and at the end of the day, society is often the one handing out the jobs.

5

I’m going through a similar process man.

Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, all dropped out of college. Jobs after his first year at Reed, Dell after his first semester at UT, and Gates in his second year at Harvard. Yet, they are some of the most successful businessmen out there.

College seems best for people who don’t know what they want to do, or if they know exactly what they want to do and need the credentials to fulfill it (i.e. law school, business school, med school, etc.). For the rest, it seems like a chance to dick around for four years away from your parents and get a degree that will get you a job that will make you useful to society.

And yet, like you said: no one remembers what they learn: classes aren’t especially useful anyway (except a few basic foundational courses), and companies can train you to fit their needs. I feel like, even if I had just one class here, the pace would still be too quick to learn or grasp anything fully. Yet, that’s the way that all four classes in a semester end up. The result is that the student ends up taking the professor’s opinion or lecture unquestioningly (after all, he makes the exams)…and memorizes someone else’s words only to forget them a month later. It isn’t about learning…it’s about institutionalization.

I’ve decided to pursue my own interests while keeping the college degree as a backup plan…for now. College seems like the most ripe opportunity to learn and solidify yourself…studying and memorizing doesn’t seem like a productive use of time.

Yet, college is also the most forgiving time…if you screw up in college, you aren’t as screwed as you would be by screwing up in the outside world.

I’ve always wondered if one could still learn to be self-sufficient enough to pull a Walden.

What if it’s a degree from an Ivy League institution (or Oxbridge)? Would that make a difference? Would you be willing to give that up?

Good luck dude…let me know how your experience goes, I’d be very interested.

6

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Going to college won’t make you a success. Not going to college won’t make you a failure. Those statistics just tell you the likelihood of an outcome from the path you chose.

The real likelihood of success or failure is rooted in the individual. If you have the drive to succeed, you will, regardless of the path you take. If you’re lacking said drive, you’d better get a degree and use it to coast as far as you can, or at very least as a coaster for your beer.

7

And comformity. Don’t leave that one out. Questions are actually somewhat frowned upon.

There are few Waldens to be had anymore, but I think the answer is “yes” it could be done.

I don’t know how the Ivy Leaguers operate. I’d have to say though that for me personally if it was anything like my first go around, I’d still have given it up.

8

Drive, I think, will get you no where without opportunity. You can be “driven” all you like, but unless the right opportunity materializes, you will be quite screwed.

To quote Gould: “I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

9

Yeah, I don’t know how far I’d trust shinton here; he seems to think that it is every bit as essential that your toilet functions properly as does a human heart. I think he may have his priorities a bit skewed.

DOING!!!

I’ve converted, shinton. A doctor is not worth any more than a plumber, isn’t that right?

We’re all of equal value. From the lowliest serial murderer to the Mother Theresa. Kill a few, save a few - you can’t prove that one is worth more than the other, isn’t that right, shinton?

To suggest otherwise is idiocy, isn’t it shinton?

Knee jerk reactions, fuckers.

10

Let it go yopele. I’d also appreciate it if you laid off the ad hominems.

11

Quid pro quo. What’s in it for me?

Just kidding. :smiley: Consider it dropped.

12

The standards of education have diminished to such an extent that a four-year college degree has effectively replaced the high school diploma as the bare essential required for even the most modest of jobs. While d0rkyd00d is quite correct in saying education ought not be directly tied to financial gain, one’s degree of financial success is certainly not something to take lightly, let alone ignore outright.

I don’t blame ‘education’ for this problem, per se. I think it’s merely due to the age - an amalgam of information, technology, world politics & economics - moving at too quick a pace for education as currently configured to keep up with. The effect, however, is that high schools ‘heavily stress’ college as if to say, ‘you need to go there to learn what we haven’t had the time nor resources to teach you here’.

Ultimately, an attitude that says ‘you don’t need college’ is synonymous with an attitude that said ‘you don’t need high school’ fifty years ago. Sure it might be true for a select few, but I’d warn just about anyone against such an attitude.

13

10.28.06.1631

You nailed it. =D> An education is important… but in all common sense, it really doesn’t matter where this education comes from as long as you’re getting one. The whole matter at that point then is not what education you have, but what you do with it that counts.

My advice to you d0rkyd00d… go to college to have fun, hang out, and meet the ladies… you won’t regret it. I know I haven’t.

14

Well hold on a second, though. Those guys dropped out of college because they had something pretty lucrative (if only potentially) to fall back on, wouldn’t you say? Sure, if you’re cooking up the next internet revolution in your garage like the Google guys, or if you’re extraordinarily talented at a trade or skill, you don’t ‘need’ college. No one’s going to argue that. But it’s something else entirely to suggest (if only indirectly) a high school education is enough to get by on. It isn’t.

Now I certainly agree when you say ‘it really doesn’t matter where this education comes from as long as you’re getting one’ - Good Will Hunting comes to mind - but I’d argue it’s a mistake to presume this is truly the case for anything but a very select set of individuals.

15

“They” try to get you into college because that’s where the real brainwashing occurs. The penny-ante indocrination you get as a young child pales next to the propoganda you’re force fed in college. And you’re at that perfect age where you’re programmed to eat it up.

16

Currently, it is force fed because we are now in a service centered economy. Usually, those who earn a middle-class wage or higher are usually well educated and in higher demand than workers, even skilled workers who are being replaced by inexpensive illegal workers.

Do not misunderstand, I grew-up in a working class family, but we lived an upper middle-class lifestyle as my mother knows how to handle money. I have the utmost respect for skill workers, machinists, contruction workers, automotive mechanics, secretaries, but even this trades provide a service, they do not manufacture tangible items.

You may luck out and do very well, some really gifted entrepreneurs like Gates do, most do not.

What do you plan to do? Education is not all about $, the rewards of the hardwork, long hours bring self-respect and a better understanding regarding opposing opinions. However, some professors are really bad news.

With regards, and best wishes in your life,

aspacia :sunglasses:

17

Well, I personally plan on self-study. I forget the word for a person who is self taught, but it is natural to pick up information about things you have a passion or interest for.

The part of college and education in general that needs to be eliminated is the extraneous knowledge that has nothing to do with one’s selected passion.
I understand there are many webs that are interwoven, but admittedly too, there are many things that are taught in school that are useful once, for one test, or one quiz, and that have nothing to do with one’s interest, that are force fed to us.

Currently, as previously mentioned, I’m a stock broker. It was a bit of luck how it happened, but the opportunities are out there for everybody. I am educating myself with Richard Dawkins, as well as Stephen Hawkins, to see what options are out there for me.

If I had a choice, however, I would be a cyberathlete. If you aren’t sure about what that is, then hopefully you will soon. I’m the leader of one of the best gaming teams in the world. :stuck_out_tongue: Holla’ at me if you need a Counter-Strike: Source lesson. :unamused:

18

Chuckle,

Public education is about a well-rounded citizen. What good is being a mathmatics whiz if you cannot communicate your findings into a language medium.

Good luck! Hell, you will probably make more than I do. I just hope you are as happy as I am with my personal life and employment.

With regards,

aspacia

:sunglasses:

19

Yes, too many professors do this, is it is appalling. Many students have complained regarding wasting 30 minutes of math class while the professor goes on an antiBush rant. What a waste of money. Professors have beening doing this for years.

Sure, a 5-10 minute digresssion does occur regardless of the discipline, but the fact that if you want to teach Black Studies, of Women’s Studies, and are a White male who rejects Affirmative Action, no job, no tenure, no dice.

Total bullshit.

With regards,

aspacia

:astonished:

20

I have no particular disdain for college, per se. But I found it to be a very closed minded place, so far as politics and sociology are concerned. It seems there’s very little room for diversity of opinions, and political correctness is rampant (disclaimer: my college days were over 15 years ago, and things may be different now- or may have been different at other schools. YMMV).