MONEY MANGER "Dont go to College"

Ouch. I hope you never make pleas against xenophobia and prejudice when you have so much of your own!

Maybe you should listen. You didn't mean your comment literally but I'll take it that way regardless. I don't know much about Africa broadly but I do speak one language and know one culture as much as someone who has entered it through marriage can (tswana). Those little epithets can teach you plenty if they are both spoken and applied- "diane di a bua" (the proverbs they speak).

 

:smt023

Campaign against ignorance (plenty of it here) one post at a time.

 

What can I say, argumentative streak right there. It's true though. It makes me sad.

 

There is nothing bad about arguments. But what is bad is when we are not open to learning and the realities that we are not used to. Realities are everywhere and it is different from most people. Most times comes with the inner man that processes what is seen in nature differently.

It took a Frenchman (Tocqueville) to loosen the knot of American democracy. Americans by nature and by founding are practical people, yet immigrants and ideas from rigorous thinkers and intellectuals visiting it and observing helped shape American democracy, its ideas and its ideals.

Personally, I think most blacks and whites in America have different experiences when it comes to choices they should make about education. I may be wrong, but this just my perception.

Whites tend to have social and cultural capital that blacks do not. Improving oneself through education can bridge that capital faster. For example, the guild membership and rigorous training of craftsmen in Europe brought a special knowledge to many Europeans that found America and this specialist knowledge is passed from generation to generation and is within culture.

It explains in some sense why some folks are innovators, and innovate so easily and others find it difficult to. For the folks that innovate, it is like standing on the shoulders of their parents to see farther ahead of them.

Liberal education can be very rewarding, yet it can be elitist and can make one lose focus of the nitty gritty of life. That is the practical aspect of modern life in American life.

Yet, for a society to sustain itself on the long term, it needs to make choices not on hard headed realities sometimes but on the longer societal interest. Studies show that the well educated a society, the more stable and the likelihood that it continues to engage itself in the re-invention of the society.

When you leave choices of modern life to be made by the markets. The markets select on short term benefits and on utilitarian calculus, the cost and benefit mode of thinking that Mr Fantastic seems to espouse. Yet, if there is no balancing act, I mean the production of merit goods, the quality of life of society suffers.

It explains why Sarah Palin can capture the political experience and the likes of Rush Limbaugh can dominate debate and ruin policies that have serious arguments behind them.

But at the same time, I will be the one to concede that practical knowledge is good. Science operates on this plain and it reinforces arguments within its sphere through experimentation and replication and duplication. Still, you can have a smart scientist and a morally bankrupt individual like the likes of Watson of the race infamy. The ideas of wild scientists without moral values that is cultivated by the arts caused someone like Hitler to take over Germany.

I think in all things balance should be the watchword. The financial crisis was caused by morally bankrupt individuals that sought not the interest of society,but their own selfish interests. On the long run what they thought was a smart move turned out to be a bad move. Scientific knowledge correlating with smartness is overrated in my opinion. It is mostly about mental conditioning.

You can read a circuit diagram precisely. Design a program to run efficiently and calculate roof trusses, or understand the mechanics of flight or motion. Yet, the human mind is difficult and very complex, and the irony of all conquering knowledge is that the human mind makes decisions on these things. You can't measure exactly how it will behave or act. It explains why mathematical modeling blew the financial markets, and explains why there has been a call for rebuilding the foundation of modern economic thinking, and the interest being shown in behavioural economics.

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sorry for the typos, and other errors, I hate editing what I write when it is this long. It is too much pain for someone that English is not his native tongue. I am happy to ramble on and one, but not to edit.

 

Thanks Naija and very well said- are you an economist or do you have an economics background? I assume so.

I meant I can't help but argue against prejudice sometimes, though I know its useless.

You have struck the core of the argument which is about the importance of balance. I too was trying to recognise that for some, the liberal education appears elitist and not suited to the ins and outs of a practical existence.

However as you so rightly point out it is the mental conditioning (which can really come from a range of education) that is important. This can be developed in various ways, provided you apply yourself. I have problems though with being spoon fed business models without being taught how to think critically about them, because it's not producing critical thinkers regardless of the grounding in practical skills. It doesn't teach people how to deal with disaster or 'profit' (either socially, financially or otherwise) from serendipity because it produces carbon copies.

For an easy but interesting read about these ideas you might be interested in the book "The Happy Economist" by Australian economist Ross Gittins.

 

Leksola sometimes people get threatened when their idea of something is rubbished totally.Some of these African-Americans who made snide remarks about Africans and the continent are pitiful. I guess some people here think i am in a little hut somewhere with flies all over my face and with my ribs sticking out with a skeletal face with sunken eyeballs and all that shit they see on TV about Africa, well i am sorry to disappoint them.And it funny how these same people cry racism when someone of another colour makes ignorant comments about them.

 

I would suggest that children go to college so that they would know that no such position as a "money monger" exists.

 

Ah LOL, thank you.

 

you welcome ...I am no economist, maybe I am ....do you have to go to school to study that? lol

thanks for the book recommendation, I will sure to include it on my reading list for the summer.

 

For me the bottom line is:

Society has deemed that higher education has the POTENTIAL of being benificial for you in a financial ways, and or creative/thinking/cultural/etc. ways.

Personally, I saw the potential benefit, went after, and got it. Everyone that I know that has at least attended one quarter/semester of some type of higher education a bit more wise for it.

 

For me higher education is attainable anywhere why should I go in debt receiving it.

 

Maybe you shouldn't go into debt.

Maybe you should seek out funding. From the time I was able to understand the cost of an higher education, my parents told me to find a way other than them because they couldn't and wouldn't pay for it all.

I through my own diligence recieved academic and athletic scholarships, as well as grants and even some donations. Plus I worked full time in landscaping and snow removal. I was virtually debt free when I finished college at a private school that cost me 35K per year.

 

Fresh bootstrap stories like yours annoy me more than inspire me. Not everyone is athletic enough to get a scholarship or intelligent enough to get one. So should those individua,s be iced out? As far as working through college I did but looking back I know could have done better in school if I didn't have to. The top percent of most college classes aren't kids who were holding down a full time job or even a part time job it was the kids who more than likely got family financial support and had far more time to study.

Especially kids like me caught in the middle class trap. To poor to afford school out right but too rich to get aide. The schools always figured if your parents made x amount of dollars they would help out but that wasn't the case and my parents flat out didn't want to since they were disappointed in where I ended up in undergrad. I'm happy you went to a good school with little debt but that's from the reality for most my friend.

 

With all due respect, yours annoy me just as much. Ok, you're not athletic, that does not exclude you from the academic scholarships. I don't know where you where looking for money, but it's not rocket science, I never had to do any research, go way out of my way, have an astranomical grade point average for any of the money I recieved. In most cases I had write letters, submit paperwork, or spend a little time in some type of little program.

The sooner people start letting go of this attitude of "dreaming," this unabtainable goal/standard thought process, and accept the harsh reality of higher education (time and effort to be successful), it is what it is. I was not a good student all the way through high school; bad grades, bad grade point average, bad test scores. But I was intelligent and my parents told me in spite of this I still needed to go to school. I went, learned that I anyone can learn anything, just depends on how much effort they put into it...it's all about time.

 

I'm not disbuting that it takes time but your given scenario where you worked through school is commendable but inefficient to produce the best students. For me during undergrad I worked anywhere between 20 to 40 hours a week on top of classes. That's no way for a person to go through school and achieve the best grades. I'm disputing education just the cost. 35k a year for just tuition(in most cases these days) is ridiculous. Even state school cost on average 20 grand year and in today's economy where even finding a full time job for 10 bucks an hour is difficult how is one to go through college without attaining a lot of debt.

 

I know, there does seem to be this issue in the US. Half the time people think my man is American until he opens his mouth because they have these pre-conceived ideas.

Yeah, the real Africa is an amazing place with lots of diversity. I hate seeing all that shit on TV all the time. I wish they would show more positive stuff. There was a show on awhile ago here in Aussie (I think it was BBC) that was really good. The dude criss crossed Africa and showed the ingenuity and hustle and beautiful aspects of life, from the Naija chick whos a hip hop start with a law degree recording in the studio to a wedding singer in Mali.