Wynn, Alex: Paglia

Two is Better Than One

In Camille Paglia’s Revitalizing the Trades she states that not enough college graduates are properly trained to do any hands on work. She blames the education system for not doing a satisfactory job of preparing students to do any real career well. I believe that there could be another variable in why it is that several people may not strive as well as past generations. People are having less and less children now and I believe that it might be having an effect on success rates in America.

My hypothesis is that children with siblings are more likely to be better motivated and to posses the motivation required to succeed in today’s economy. I base this on the idea of what is known as sibling rivalry, people with more siblings are more motivated to succeed in life. The way sibling rivalry works is that children with siblings must compete with each other for attention from their parents, thus instilling a sense of competitiveness in them to be the best they can be.

People believe that it is more likely for the older child to succeed than their younger siblings. I do not believe that this is true because no matter how the older sibling turns out it can very easily have a positive influence on how the younger sibling ends up. For instance if the eldest is very successful it could encourage the younger sibling to be more motivated due to the standards they must now live up to. On the other hand, if the older sibling is unmotivated and does not succeed, it would be very easy for the younger sibling to be motivated to do better than that of their sibling and be the first in the line to achieve success.

Another aspect to my hypothesis is that only children lack the sociability that is essential in making it through college in today’s world. Children with siblings are able to better learn and cope with other people due to their early exposure to having someone with them that they can relate to their entire lives. This personality trait could have a direct result in whether a person succeeds in the business world of this time.

So it is a farfetched solution; however if people would start having more children then perhaps the success rate of this new generation of America would increase. I don’t agree with Paglia that the education system is failing America’s youth, resulting in untrained, unemployed citizens. I say that there are just too few youth in America, and if we could increase that number by couples having more than once child each then we would see a more efficient, successful population.