Bower, Leigan: Paglia

In “Revalorizing the Trades”, Camille Paglia writes about how universities these days are doing little to nothing to prepare their students for the real world, as well as how hands-on jobs are being pushed out the window. She believes that there “is little flexibility in American higher education to allow for alternative career tracks” and that “the pressuring of middle-class young people into office-bound, paper-pushing jobs is cruelly shortsighted”

I agree with Paglia’s views when it comes to universities not preparing us for the real world. In this day and age, college is nothing more than a glorified high school; professors coddle their students, deadlines are extended, and tuition payments aren’t met. Students can go weeks without showing up to class and still pass; try this in a real-world job setting and that person will be without a paycheck. “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” . I agree with the sentence above; students these days have more options available than simply getting a job. Most college students these days still rely on their parents or guardians to pay their bills and bail them out of trouble when need be; students don’t know a thing about fiscal or self responsibility. Unlike their high-school-diploma possessing, got-a-job-right-out-of-high-school peers, they don’t know how to support themselves when they finally do great because they spent an extra four to six years being spoon-fed by the people who are supposed to be teaching them how to live on their own. This is going to cause them to not know what to do whether they get an office job or a field job.

Speaking of office or field jobs, I do not agree with Paglia’s statement that middle class young people are being forced into office positions. There are plenty of jobs which are field positions; some of which are the jobs that hold society together. Police work and forensic psychology are field positions; those workers do not sit at a computer to do their job. Most researchers and scientists work in the field instead of in an office, and those are two of the main occupations that professors try and push their students into becoming. I believe that this sentence comes from Paglia’s own perspective and not from any kind of actual research. Also, Paglia writes that there is a shortage of jobs where you work with your hands; this is not true as well. Carpentry, construction work, and architecture are all jobs where people work with their hands in creative ways. There are many trade schools and colleges that offer classes in these types of jobs, especially architecture.

            

Camille Paglia has provided us with a paper that, to me, is written largely from her own point of view. It is true that most universities do not prepare their students adequately enough for the real world, but it is not true that they are trying to force them into office positions. Nor is it true that there is a shortage of jobs where people work with their hands.