PAPA'S ADVICE--GET AN EDUCATION

I’m going to get my high school diploma, then a degree from college and I will have my ticket punched to fame and fortune.  I know because my guidance counselor told me a degree is the ticket.  Wrong

A degree from any level of formal education is worth about as much as the Vice Presidency was when John Nance Garner described the office, while being sought to fill it by President Franklin Roosevelt,  as “not worth a warm bucket of spit”.  You are thinking old papa has lost his mind.  You know you don’t want your mother or dad to read this.  Poor old Papa has really lost it and should be put away you think, but not so fast grasshoppers.  Papa did not say an education was not important, I said a degree does not mean anything if it does not truly represent the education one has gained to be used the rest of your life. 

We (our country) have become so focused on getting the ‘degree’ we have lost sight of what it should represent.  A ‘degree’ means absolutely nothing.  You can get them by mail order,  get them on-line and really just make one up and fill in the blanks.  There was a time in earlier generations when a ‘degree’ really meant something.  The only place you could get one was from an institution with few students, a dedicated faculty,  single minded and focused on teaching and having their students learn, and students who recognized they were there to learn and develop and not simply to get a thick sheet of paper signed by the president of the school.  In those days even the high school diploma represented a completion of a learning experience and not just a preliminary step to nowhere.   

  

Don’t get me wrong.  I know there are great teachers in every school who do all they can to stimulate you to learn, but I don’t feel they do enough to teach you why you learn and what learning really is.  Even the great teachers are working on timelines and quotas to meet goals designed by someone probably far away that fails to take into consideration the individual student’s abilities, motivations and correct pace to learn.  
Everything is geared to the average and there are few average people alive. 

Learning originally was self-motivated and driven by the individual student searching and seeking to learn something that would serve him/her in life.  Universities grew because people sought out scholars and wise men from which to learn.  There were neither grades nor time period for a course of study.  The student would search and explore whatever he was seeking until he understood it as much as possible.  Soon man learned a well-rounded education prepared him even better and the individual scholars, experts in their own fields, taught in one single geographic location so the students could study the various subjects in one place, thus the liberal arts education. 

The magic here comes not from the teacher or institution but from the student.  Now I hope each of you seek and obtain a Liberal Arts education.  I think it prepares one better for a fuller life.  This may not be the best for everyone, but education is essential for everyone.  You may be better suited for a razor focused specific skill or trade education.  The point I want to make is that no matter what you are best suited for and what you intend to do, don’t expect success just because you obtain a degree.  Expect success when you, by your own wit and intellect seek knowledge and wisdom for the sole sake of making you a more complete person, not for the sake of getting some degree anyone with enough money and time can get. 

Get the education forget the degree.  The degree should evidence what you have accomplished.  It is important to communicate just what it should, that you have sought wisdom, have paid a price in time and effort of obtain it and most important you can apply the wisdom you have learned.  The degree should not represent you stayed long enough to get the teachers and courses necessary to get a passing grade without working, without thinking and without struggling to internalize everything you could.  It should tell the world you took full advantage of the opportunity afforded you. 

LEARN, DON’T JUST GO TO SCHOOL.