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<p>I very much support the idea of higher education but i also think that abolishing tenure is an idea whose time might have come. </p>
<p>While I do support higher education, I do find it to be rather narrow. Some of the most intelligent, creative, and inspiring people I know left formal education after high school and some have never had a formal education at all. </p>
<p>People can say what they want about home schoolers but they certainly are not boring adults.</p>
<p>^^^ Thank you and +1. I just see too many people on this forum (including myself at times) who pass judgment on careers and colleges without making it clear that they have no firsthand experience with the issue at hand.</p>
<p>“…if Adams were alive today, he would probably be studying agricultural economics or something similarly mundane.”</p>
<p>Yes, even though he was a Harvard graduate and knew and experienced the higher and finer things of life - including the high refinement of the French royal court, there apparently never was any honest work that Adams felt was beneath him. </p>
<p>But the point that I was making is that the world in general, and notions of the main point of education in particular, may look rather different to people in different circumstances. Thus it not appropriate for people on either end of the Trade Skills vs. Life of the Mind debate to sneer at or claim superiority over the other. What’s right for you may depend a lot on your circumstances, as Adams eloquently told us.</p>
<p>While it’s true that the professions mentioned, like medicine, teaching, etc, require a lot of training, any good practioners of these arts are also well educated.</p>
<p>The best, smartest doctor I know, who also happens to be a superb high school teacher, majored in philosophy as an undergrad.</p>
<p>And if you ask him what the purpose of education is, he will say “to create informed, thinking citizens.”</p>
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<p>I guess it depends on why a family homeschools, but I’ve known some real clunkers.</p>
<p>Well, my auto mechanic in California had a PhD in mechanical engineering. He was making a lot of money running a successful repair shop. He understood at a fundamental level any problem that the car might have, and he could explain it in precise and accurate language. Best of all, he just couldn’t tell lies like many mechanics, and invent all sorts of non-existent and expensive problems.</p>
<p>I think it is great to be a chef or something like that. Ideally, go to a top university or LAC for a 4 year degree, then go to chef school.</p>
<p>I think the cost of today’s education also pushes some to think that coming out of college without a clear way to pay back over $100,00 of debt is insane.</p>
<p>That’s why I agree with John Adams’ progression–a person may have the freedom to major in something esoteric if he or she won’t come out of college with massive student loans because commerce minded parents paid the bills.</p>
<p>Hmm, does anyone know if John Quincy Adams’s kids studied art and literature?</p>
<p>Good question. The other option is that the kids of parents with money aren’t ambitious at all, but end up layabouts and drunkards, spending the family fortune…</p>
<p>George Washington Adams, John Quincy Adams’ oldest son, was a lawyer and politician who died at age 28 from drowning.</p>
<p>“George Washington Adams was the eldest son of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, and his wife Louisa Adams. George (named for the first U.S. president, George Washington) graduated from Harvard and studied law before becoming a member of the house of representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1826). He apparently led a troubled life – he had a reputation as an alcoholic womanizer predisposed to gloom and paranoia. He drowned after going overboard in the Long Island Sound 30 April 1829 and his body was reported found washed ashore 13 June 1829. It is generally assumed he committed suicide.”</p>
<p>Charles Francis Adams, another son of John Quincy, was a lawyer and politician also.</p>
<p>Charles Francis Adams’ son, John Quincy Adams II, was a lawyer, farmer and politician. </p>
<p>Looks like politics was the family business–so far, no artists or authors.</p>
<p>Henry Adams, the grandson of John Quincy Adams wrote one of the best books on education and the 19th century of all time. His autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams, is a classic of the autobiographical genre, and I’m not talking about dumb James-Frey-type pseudomemoirs here. His autobiography is a fierce and subtle critique of the education that he received at Harvard and what it means to be educated. Check it out. [The</a> Education of Henry Adams - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Education_of_Henry_Adams]The”>The Education of Henry Adams - Wikipedia) Yes, it is long, about 500 pages, but you will find that it addresses all of the concerns that come up in this thread’s title.</p>
<p>The Adams family had about their same share of alcoholics etc as many families did. The lives of John and Abagail Adams both offer strong arguments for homeschooling. And as for the post that pointed out John Adams went back to eke a living out of the poor Massachusetts soil, at least he did it without employing slaves.</p>
<p>Thanks, ellemenope. </p>
<p>Many of the founders produced disappointing and troubled offspring, as I remember. Some of Ben Franklin’s heirs were an embarrassment, as well.</p>
<p>I have another observation about the John Adams quote, for what it’s worth. I think that Adams was not alluding to the progression within individual families, but the progression of the brand new United States of America. During the colonial and revolutionary period, Europeans had a less than respectful attitude toward the home-grown culture on this side of the Atlantic, their fascination with Franklin notwithstanding. The idea that this new nation had a long way to go to catch up with the Europeans was shared by the small slice of colonists/Americans who had some formal education. I think what Adams had in mind was that it would take a few generations for things to settle out enough that America could develop a significant intellectual class that studied things like Latin, Greek, fine arts, philosophy, and so on. It is completely understandable that a man of his generation would not foresee that America’s strength would not be founded on replicating the culture of Europe, but on technological innovation. The engineers and inventors have had much to do with making us what we are. </p>
<p>No doubt Adams would not be happy to hear that Ben Franklin, a real burr on his backside, was the man of the future, while his hypothetical literary grandchild was relatively unimportant.</p>
<p>EngProfMom, thanks for the reference. J. Adams should be honored more than he is, as much for his life-long opposition to slavery as anything else.</p>
<p>Eh, WRT to the OP, I’m fully on the side of college as education to be a better human being, not a better wage earner. I drank the Liberal Arts koolaid at a young age. (I tell people I was exposed to “too much Chaucer, too soon!” as an undergrad.) From birth my children have heard about going to college not as a job training thing, but to immerse themselves fully in their intellectual passions. My education background is in religion, languages, and women’s studies. My <em>work</em> life has been largely technical support. I love support work – I’m rare that way among my peers – but I wouldn’t have wanted to waste an education learning about it. My children have been free to choose the school path and majors they want, without me pestering them about what’s the most likely return on investment. I think my focus on education to become a better human being influenced my son’s college choices; he was all about schools that emphasized ‘life of the mind’ and plans to pursue at least one doctorate. My daughter, on the other hand, is all about choosing a school that will teach her practical skills to be an artist, and that’s cool, too.</p>
<p>Midmo is correct that Adams was using his hopes for his family as a metaphor for the progression of the US. But the metaphor remains apt as an accurate description of the possibility of progression of real families through education, or even the progression of individuals. </p>
<p>None of my grandparents went beyond the 8th grade. My parents went to high school (Mom graduated; Dad didn’t), and my dad supported the family with a professional military career and later a civil service career. My siblings and I all went to some form of college (inexpensive ones) and majored in practical things like business and science and went to work in those fields. My daughters are going or already went to high-end schools back east where they are majoring in whatever they want. The progression is real. The answer to the Practical Skills vs. Life of the Mind question was very different for my parents than it is for daughters, with me somewhere is the middle.</p>
<p>^^^I guess we are a somewhat more prosaic family. My parents ended schooling at the 8th grade. I appalled everyone by going to college and majoring in history. Then I married a future professor type, a profession my father–a construction worker–considered effete. He didn’t change his mind when I returned to school, got a biochemistry degree and then went on to graduate school so I too could be a useless professor type.</p>
<p>My own kids grew up in a household in which reading literature and history, and talking about it, are commonplace and expected. However, son is majoring in computer science and math (and Russian), and will no doubt be quite gainfully employed; he reads widely, though, and I’m not concerned that he will be a shallow technocrat. My daughter is a hs senior, but her current plan is to major in a pre-vet related field that will give her ready employment options if she changes her vet plans, with a second major or minor in a just-for-fun field like history, English, anthropology.</p>
<p>As I said earlier, I don’t believe there is necessarily a dichotomy between educated and trained, to the extent “trained” means preparing for a particular profession with a defined skill set. I have a slight prejudice driving my positions, though, I will admit: it is very easy for an intelligent individual to self-educate about history, the arts, literature, even foreign languages, just by taking advantage of libraries and the internet; it is far more difficult to become a bench scientist or an engineer on one’s own, or in one’s spare time.</p>
<p>midmo: WRT becoming an engineer on one’s own time – exactly. I have a great deal of respect for my partner, who taught himself programming at a very deep level (he works mostly on graphics drivers in the space between hardware and software). He has a deeper theoretical understanding than many younger guys who got degrees in computer science.</p>
<p>^Have fun working jobs you hate to buy stuff you don’t need.</p>
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<p>Hear, hear!</p>
<p>By the way, I know my post about training versus education was overly simplistic, but it seems to have sparked some thoughtful replies, so mission accomplished. I am an engineer and consider myself to be more educated than trained, and I see the same in many (though not most) of my colleagues. Surely the same is true for other professions as well.</p>