The one and only, Dr. Camille Paglia (pictured), argues that more twenty-somethings should be encouraged to work, not with their heads, but their hands. As she writes, in Revalorizing the Trades: "The pressuring of middle-class young people into officebound, paper-pushing jobs is cruelly shortsighted. Concrete manual skills, once gained through the master-apprentice alliance in guilds, build a secure identity. Our present educational system defers credentialing and maturity for too long. When middle-class graduates in their mid-20s are just stepping on the bottom rung of the professional career ladder, many of their working-class peers are already self-supporting and married with young children."Read the whole essay - it's a gem!
2 comments:
Sound advice. I just wish Dr. Paglia didn't use the all too trendy word "valorize". The primary definition suggests government action which is just the sort thing we'd like to avoid.
1: to enhance or try to enhance the price, value, or status of by organized and usually governmental action
2
: to assign value or merit to : validate
— val·o·ri·za·tion noun
Dr. P probably didn't write the headline where that word pops up.
But, given her left-wing sensibilities, I suspect she isn't loathe to the type of government action/credentializing sensible conservatives and libertarians disapprove of.
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