Hultberg, Joshua: Paglia

I really liked the essay written by Camille Paglia because it highlights a huge unnoticed problem in our society. From our high school years on we’re told that we need to go to college or else we will never be successful. Today’s society has placed a lot of emphasis on our post high school experience. When I was a junior I was told that I needed to go and to know already where I was going to college and what I was going to do for the rest of my life.  It was like it was expected that my fellow students and I were to go and become these paper pushing robots for the rest of our lives.

The vocational field is tremendously underappreciated; people do all sorts of jobs that society deems “unworthy” for the common person to accomplish. This has been quietly ignored until recently with shows like “Dirty Jobs” and “How It’s Made.”

The fact that most colleges and vocational schools exist completely separate from each other is key evidence. Most colleges offer only education that would benefit the corporate class. The other thing is that most colleges teach are things that don’t benefit everyday life.

The vocational schools one sees on the television offering to jump start people’s career are an industry. I want to go and open up my own shop someday, but I can’t learn how to do that at SAU. I plan to get a degree in business and attend to a vocational college after my education here and become certified as an automotive and welding expert.

The vocational track is not dead and it certainly is not substandard to the office community. With job loss on the rise and the low points of an economic recession looking us in the eye, Americans need to realize that they are not too good to get out of their offices and do some honest manual work. There is something satisfying about doing one’s own work. After every construction project I’ve done in the past three years I’ve been able to hang a sign off of it and say “Hey, I built that.” It is refreshing to have a sense of pride in one’s work. We need to open our eyes and see that we are not too proud to do some honest work. A hundred years ago, that was almost all there was.