Who is the Expert?

Who knows most about the “common man” (cm) and his issues? Who is best in position to speak to cm and help with those issues?

In a world where college degrees are more and more common and common sense has left the building, who knows what is going on?

College classes have been just as diluted as high school, junior high, and grade schools make them be. If the rigorous classes are not already taught and the student is not already prepared for college level work, then high school work is what is taught in college. This should be scary.

There are lists of weird classes offered by real colleges in the US. A Kentucky college offers a class in the “Art of Walking.” I would think that this skill had been mastered by the normal college applicant. In this class, however, students read works by noted walkers and take walks with the professor and his dog. Great preparation for life in the real world.

The prestigious Barnard College offers a class entitled “The Road Movie” where Easy Rider, Thelma and Louise, and other movies are discussed. Wow, wouldn’t that make you ready to take on the world? What preparation for life! What a fabulous way to spend both tuition and time.

And everyone’s favorite waste of brain cells, “The Philosophy of Star Trek” where time travel, thinking and feeling computers, and philosophical issues facing the characters on Star Trek (does not say if only the television series, all the television series spin offs, or movies are the subject base) are discussed by the serious college student. All this can happen at Georgetown University.

So, after taking a rigorous set of classes and completing the coursework required by your college of choice, you now have a degree and can discuss, while walking, how Jim, Spock, and Scotty, roam on various planets. This makes you an expert.

Most colleges and universities offer remedial classes in reading, writing, and mathematics. Most of these have students who take these types of classes for less than a year, few have students enrolling for these types of classes for MORE THAN A YEAR. And fully ¾ of students who take these classes pass them. That’s nice. That means that ¼ fail them. These people got into college somehow and they can’t pass the classes that are not even college level class work and that class work has been diluted already. This is scary.

So where is this leading?

Do people with college degrees have a better handle on what life is about? Do they know more about the ways of the world in general? Are they truly the experts?

I wouldn’t want a doctor who hadn’t gone through a med school and passed his licensing board’s requirements. I wouldn’t want a lawyer who hadn’t gone to school and passed the bar. Although both fields of endeavor have, in the past, had less scrupulous standards and were not as severely maintained, they have more to learn today than a couple hundred years ago.

I think it is nice that teachers learn how to teach but wonder if it is necessary in light of all the home schooled students who, by their parent's estimation, are excelling while learning in a situation where the parent has had no formal education in how to teach. Is there a person who has a natural inclination to teach and that is not bettered by the educational process? Do college classes really teach how to teach? Is there a true method of “how to teach?” Are parents who home school their children teaching them? Really? What a conundrum.

Do bartenders know more about the common man and his problems than a shrink with lots of letters after his name? Do those letters make the person an expert or is that a result of observations and integrated thinking? Can someone know stuff without having a piece of paper? Is education in colleges the only way to get smart? Are the people without higher degrees really unlearned?

As we push more and more of the less and less prepared through the diploma mills, who are the people we will lean on for more knowledge? How educated is someone who knows all about the philosophy of Star Trek?

What is the purpose of a higher degree? It is, I believe, oftentimes, to make colleges and universities money.