What if you're dumb?

CCC88
Fri, 03 Apr 2009 02:07:39 +0000

It’s irritating that blue-collar work is being lumped into this.

Sargazerlilies,

“…a blue collar job if you can’t handle college.”

Please. I’ve considered going into the military or the trades after college. These two areas of work are often denigrated by intellectuals, and as an eventual college graduate, I’ve heard from others that such work is “below me” and that I “have so much more potential”. But it has nothing to do with not being academically capable. The idea of working as a white collar peon doesn’t appeal to everyone, money be damned. There’s also something inherently satisfying in making something tangible with your hands.

I am probably misconstruing your argument but here it goes. Your first sentence explicitly states that college use to be exclusively for “intelligent” people. You continue to say that today, even unintelligent people can go to college and graduate. Your next paragraph, you say that if a person cannot handle college, they should consider blue-collar work. You insinuate that those in manual labor could not even handle the easiest schools which “cater to students who don’t do as well academically.”

What you’re missing, I believe, is a clarification of what it means to be “intelligent”. Those wealthy “intelligent” elites who use attend colleges exclusively typify only one type of intelligence. Many of those elite college types, I would guess, would not have possessed the spatial intelligence required to be a successful carpenter.

I agree on your main point that college is not for everyone. I just disagree on the tone of your post, which still comes off as slightly elitist. Nitpicking, I suppose.