Without
College Everyone Would Be an Idiot, Right?
by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Recently
by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: Not
All ‘End the Fed’ People Quite Get It
I’d like
to quote this
whole article from Yahoo News, and so I highly recommend you
read it, but I especially like this passage, which considers how
people might acquire knowledge in a world without the presumption
that everyone should go to college. Why, wouldn’t we all be
ignorant? (Quite unlike the situation that prevails today, of course.)
In young
adulthood, you’d make friends, acquaintances and misspent-youth
memories in the workplace, online and in service to community,
cause and country. That’s where you’d also acquire polish,
a work ethic and a conscience.
You’d
bring glory or ignominy to your family the old-fashioned way:
through your contributions to society and your interactions with
your fellows. The glory/ignominy die would not be cast when you
were 17, by a letter of admission or rejection. Imagine.
You’d
read, do problem sets and hear lectures as needed or desired –
in reading groups, at workshops, on the road, at community programs,
at corporate programs, at museums and libraries and above all
on the Internet. You’d study not to get a credential; you’d
study to improve your mind or acquire a skill, the same reason
you go to karate, yoga or mandolin class.
If you happened
to be the rare type who loves nothing more than to study liberal
arts – if you were scholarly and somewhat monastic by nature
– you might raise the money and enroll in an affordable college
with some like-minded students and a good library.
Read “How
to Burst the College Bubble.”
Reprinted
with permission from TomWoods.com.
October
8, 2012
Thomas
E. Woods, Jr. [send him
mail; visit his
website], a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute,
is the creator of Tom
Woods’s Liberty Classroom, a libertarian educational
resource. He is the author of eleven books, including the New
York Times bestsellers Meltdown
(on the financial crisis; read Ron Paul’s foreword)
and The
Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, and most
recently Nullification
and Rollback.
Copyright
© 2012 Thomas
Woods
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