I beg the reader’s indulgence as I appeal to the Holy Scriptures. Please turn with me now to Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, which is no less authoritative than any other holy book.
In Chapter 2, verses 9 and 11, the prophet Holmes explains to his astonished acolyte Watson his intention to forget the Copernican model: “The skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work… You say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
There you have it. Education that doesn’t help you make a living wastes precious brain space. You were on to something that time you stormed home from school grousing about having to read Shakespeare, solve for x, or remember that Kansas City isn’t the capital of Kansas. You knew damn well that whether your future self could make a living would never hinge on your ability to diagram a sentence, name the reproductive parts of a flower, or recite the periodic table.
I am pleased to report that your vindication is at hand. At long last, the United States and not a few state legislatures are cutting or threatening to cut funding for silly courses that fail to equip you with specific, marketable job skills. It’s high time! After all, name one mechanic, physician, airline pilot, bus driver, framer, glazier, attorney, gymnast, hospital admissions clerk, real estate agent, or other wage-earner whose income depends on knowing the first thing about, say, Renaissance art, Nietzsche, or anything having to do with East Asia.
Before you click SEND on the angry email forming in your head, permit me to grant that sometimes—sometimes—certain tidbits of arcane knowledge may—may—come in handy for a few—a few—arcane people who happen to have set their arcane eye on some arcane career. Moreover, I grant the existence of weirdos claiming to enjoy knowledge for its own sake and of deviants yammering about the betterment of society. I’m not writing for them. I am writing for real people. People like you and me. People who aren’t quite sure what “arcane” means, much less how to use it.
Speaking of what words mean, let’s pause for a moment to define “education.” According to Webster’s Most Responsible Dictionary, Third Edition, you’re “educated” if you “learnt a bunch of stuff.” One is hard-pressed to imagine a more blistering indictment. Nobody but nobody needs an entire bunch. Most of us get by just fine with not quite a smidge.
Don’t go whining about the need for “experts.” To paraphrase former Texas State Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy, experts are the very evil we gotta stand up to. Experts are too easily mired in facts and perspective. You don’t need facts and perspective to sort what’s what from what’s not. Clinical studies have shown that all you need is your noggin. That, and your god–given ability to figger.
I have personally witnessed the power of figgerin by people ever at the ready to set straight anyone presumptuous enough to open a sentence with “Actually…” To wit, here are but a few insights I picked up while seated at the feet of figgerers. I challenge you to not be dazzled:
- It figgers that the planet isn’t warming because there are places where it snows in wintertime. Besides, it figgers that warming, were it real, which it isn’t, would be a good thing, because Americans love tropical locales like Honolulu and Miami Beach (and soon, I figger, Mount Rainier).
- It figgers that vaccines cause autism, because correlation, Big Pharma, and Jenny McCarthy.
- It figgers that raw, unpasteurized milk is better for you because it comes out of the cow that way. Like manure.
- It figgers that since enabling is bad, the best way to help the less fortunate is not to help them.
- It figgers that atheists are horrible people because morals come from the biblical god. You know, the dude who fed kids to bears and struck dead a married couple for withholding money from the church.
No doubt you, too, have examples of figgerin that could be added to the list. But I figger I’ve made my point.
Now, a smartypants pretending to an education might attempt to rebut some or all of the above. Said smartypants should consider another scripture, Blazing Saddles. Recall what the acolyte Waco Kid told the prophet Sheriff Bart: “You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.”
History, a useless subject no one should study, has repeatedly shown that the common clay have little need for facts and perspective. Education shmeducation. Let’s get down to figgerin.