geeks

[JKSCHW at aol.com]

OK, OK, the Foucauldian analysis about the utility of credentials for personnel depts is true as far as it goes, but don't be reductive. In addition to socialization and filtering, credentials and degrees, or at least education and training, also spare employers the need for additional on-the-job training. For example, in your first year and a half of law school, they really do teach you stuff you need to know, and which it would be a pain to have to learn on the job--more for your boss than for you, although of course that is the way it used to be done.

As far as the knowledge in the college not being disseminated to the masses, the masses ain't interested in the latest developments in string theory, nonequilibrium economists, psotmodern cultural criticism, or 14th century Italian history. It's not a plot, just a fact. I would certainly be glad if my latest paper (on Rawls) created a sensation among the masses. but it's not going to happen.

What's wrong with having something to talk about with people who are interested in the same things as you? I have a mild interest in baseball, none in TV; I'd rather talk about politics or philosophy. Does that make me a male chauvinist pig dick swinger? Many working people think that it makes me some kind of a faggot, and they don't mean that in any positive sense.

--jks

In a message dated Thu, 21 Sep 2000  8:53:22 AM Eastern Daylight Time, John Kawakami <johnk at cyberjava.com> writes:

<< 
>Degrees are a mere convenience to the personnel departments
>of corporations. They don't want skilled programmers half
>as much as they don't want to be bothered by working too
>hard to make their appointments. So they need an automatic
>screening device provided by someone else.
>
>Carrol

It's also a social filter.  It filters out people who aren't middle class,
and also acts as an excuse not to hire minorities.  (Think that second
one through - it's true.)

There's something else about college.  There's a lot of knowledge
that's locked up in there, and not disseminated to the masses.
Sometimes, you're learning something that isn't that important,
but it gives you something to talk about with another college
educated person.  (To put it in terms that this list  uses - strictly
for the whipping out of the dick.)

-- 

--------------------------------------
John Kawakami
johnk at cyberjava.com, johnk at firstlook.com

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