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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: A Nation of Working-Class Dropouts Every time a liberal sees someone behaving badly they sigh and say, “They just need education,” but the solution to America’s problems is less education, not more. If we got over this myth that everyone needs infinite academia, we would have less unemployment, more manufacturing, a stronger economy, less student debt, and less school tax. The economy would be stronger and we would all be happier. Ironically, in an effort not to hurt anyone’s feelings, we developed a system where everyone has to go to college, even the stupid people, until we all feel like shit. When everybody’s special, nobody is. Getting everyone into college means you have to dumb down the curriculum until it is nothing but meaningless drivel that has no application in the real world. Colleges aren’t going to complain when you stick them with more customers. They just take the check, lower the bar, and say, “Come on in.” But getting a gold star on your math test does not a computer programmer make. When my dad was a kid in Scotland, Britain was practicing a very successful exam system called 11-plus. Dad came from a huge working-class family and as is often the case, one of them had an IQ much higher than the others. They all took their 11-plus test at age 11. His brothers did fairly poorly and he did incredibly well. The brothers were then diverted from academia and put into trade schools, whereas my father got scholarships for private school and eventually got a degree in physics from Glasgow University. The brothers did very well working at a printing press and now lead fulfilled lives as proud tradesmen. My father went on to develop sonar equipment that called the Russians’ nuclear-submarine bluff and helped lead to the fall of communism. This was all thanks to the 11-plus system and it worked beautifully for over 30 years until 1976 when the egalitarians decided it was cruel to admit that some kids are simply not as smart as others. Not only is this kind of thinking the stupidest. It’s stupidist. What’s the matter with not being smart? As Hemingway put it, “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” Have you ever seen a genius at a water park? He’s miserable. The only time people with an IQ over 120 are really happy is when they’re at work. They’re basically our slaves. Dumb people ride ATVs with their sons, go bungee jumping, and laugh their heads off when somebody farts. Many of them are also rich. Many cops and firemen in NYC retire at age 40 with a $120K-a-year pension. When they die, the money goes to their spouse. It’s the same with most union men in this city. I know a union electrician here who easily clears $100K a year and he’s only 32. There is a huge demand for his level of expertise and if he doesn’t feel like working, he can rent his license out to a site that’s dying for it. Sometimes the union even pays him not to work because they want to give some new kids a chance. A few weekends ago, he and his buddies made $10K each. The job was past deadline so everyone had to work around the clock. That meant they’d bring cots and add up their breaks until they could take a six-hour stretch on the mat. Staying at the site all weekend meant overtime became time-and-a-half became double overtime, and by the time Sunday night rolled around, they were making more than most doctors. The client was happy because having these guys all weekend is cheaper than the late fees he was going to have to pay. Poets, bloggers, film experts, gender warriors, religion aficionados, and modern dance novelists would be lucky to make $10K in a lifetime. Even lawyers in their first couple of years could only dream of a weekend like this. Unlike the cops and firemen, my friend’s union is private, but like the majority of Brooklyn blue-collar workers I’ve met, he’s damn proud of what he does. When I see young people wandering around in a daze with $60K of student debt on their backs, I see a welder who never was. Forcing everyone to become smart is like a countrywide affirmative-action plan. It doesn’t work. I once questioned Jared Taylor about his statement that affirmative action in universities is bad for blacks, and he told me that blacks who have been bumped up to colleges above their test scores rarely prosper. They drop out. He also said they don’t drop down to a lesser school or a trade school; they drop out entirely. That’s what America has become: a nation of working-class dropouts with no direction, no pride, and no sense of self. Another problem with assuming everyone needs to be educated is the sheer cost. We spend at least $10K per student per year. That number has been climbing steadily since the 1950s, while test scores have remained flat. It ain’t working. Encouraging the dumb kids to drop out in their teens the way they did in the 1950s would save us billions, and our policies should reflect that. If a student with terrible grades wants to leave school and go learn how to fit pipe, he should be rewarded some of the money we’re saving. Buy him a car or some tools. Pay the rent at his workshop. Give him a gift card for Home Depot. Teens who are bored in the classroom should be working the garbage trucks. It sure beats forcing them to watch documentaries about the Baader-Meinhof gang. I don’t understand why Britain abandoned the 11-plus system. Englishmen are the kings of working-class pride. Britain’s blue collars cultivate their accent and encourage each other to further ostracize the middle class by using rhyming slang. Their soccer teams are their life, and the farthest they’d ever travel would be the summer fair in Blackpool. The 11-plus system had the UK running like clockwork until the myth of equality blew it all apart. The septics (“septic tanks” AKA “Yanks”) followed suit, and soon the entire Western world was predicated on the myth that more education equals more prosperity. The controversy that destroyed 11-plus is long and complex, but the CliffsNotes version is that some clueless politician saw educated siblings do better than uneducated siblings and thought, “They should all have the opportunity to do as well as their brother.” But the educated sibling didn’t thrive because he was educated. He was educated because he thrived. If you think his brothers got ripped off, tell it to God. He was the one who doled out the lower IQs. 11-plus recognized that some people are smarter than others. Getting kids out of school early also means less government, which is another big reason it was abolished. Only an idiot could truly believe we’re all equally smart. I’m not denying that outsourcing and automation has made many jobs obsolete. Of course it has. But that doesn’t mean you abandon the entire concept of a working class. There is still a huge demand for skilled labor. But our young people aren’t skilled (or interested) in hard labor, so we bring in illegal Mexicans. When you take away a young person’s ability to work, you take away their pride. If we had more skilled tradesmen, we’d have more entrepreneurs in manufacturing and the Rust Belt would get a coat of paint. The hulking youths from the factory floor of yesteryear are tending bar today. They make enough money to pay the interest on their student loans, but that’s about it. They can’t pay rent, so they live with their parents and they have no self-esteem because this bar job is the first one they’ve ever had. “Undocumented” workers did all the chores while growing up. Many of them also make more money than the bartender who sleeps on his parents’ couch ever will. Way to go, equality. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 3.
#3. To: X-15 (#0)
In Alberta a drop in oil sands oil revenue to the government has forced cutbacks in grants to universities which in the case of the science faculty at U of Alberta is reducing enrollment by 600 to 6100 by increasing the high school admission average from 76% to 80%. Difficult to see how having fewer people learning advanced or any aspects of science benefits anybody.
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