college alternatives Archives

College Alternatives

submitted by jwithrow.

Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
College Alternatives

March 20, 2015
Hot Springs, VA

The S&P opened at $2,090 today. Gold is up to $1,170 per ounce. Oil checks in at $46 per barrel. Bitcoin is still trading around $262 per BTC, and the 10-year Treasury rate opened at 1.96% today.

Yesterday we opined that the proverbial needle was rapidly approaching the student loan bubble and that the American system of higher education would shrink significantly once the bubble popped. Today I feel it prudent to discuss why this is not such a bad thing.

We briefly analyzed the student loan racket yesterday and discussed how students currently graduate college with a mound of debt disproportionate to the job market and income-prospects they face. This is enough to warrant questioning, but the ills of the college system run even deeper.

We have discussed at length the problems inherent within the public school system here and we have noted how the system systematically conveys a lack of purpose to students. Students are force-fed a medley of politically correct information on various subjects and they are expected to memorize and then regurgitate this information. They are told this is important so they can get good grades which they need to get into college. This is a very vague purpose which tends to lead students away from critical thinking and introspection thus few students really discover and cultivate their individual talents and passions.

To the students’ surprise, the higher education system simply expands upon this vagueness of purpose. Students arrive at these beautiful campuses expecting to learn the secrets to success but they soon find out the college curriculum is mostly more of the same – memorize the chapters in this standardized textbook and regurgitate the information on the test. Oh, and this textbook costs $200 but don’t worry you can get a student loan to cover it. So our student quickly learns that college is not a fountain of knowledge but rather just another system to be gamed.

This model of education encourages what Napoleon Hill, in Outwitting the Devil, referred to as ‘drifting’. Hill defines ‘drift’ by saying “people who think for themselves never drift, while those who do little or no thinking for themselves are drifters”. Hill continues: “A drifter is one who permits himself to be influenced and controlled by circumstances outside of his own mind… He doesn’t know what he wants from life and spends all of his time getting just that. A drifter has lots of opinions but they are not his own.”

The habit of drifting is exactly what the American higher educational system reinforces. Just as high school students were told college acceptance is their ultimate goal, college students are told a high-paying job is the ultimate goal to be pursued. Their focus then is on building best possible ‘resume’ (with as little work as possible) so as to impress the corporate recruiters who show up at job fairs on their campus every spring. Further, the college grading system reinforces the fear of making of mistakes already deeply imbedded in the minds of the students who have completed twelve years of public education. Errors are ridiculed and scorned in college just as they were in high school so the necessity to conform is hammered home even harder.

So upon graduating college most students: lack a defining sense of purpose, have been cultured to avoid mistakes at all costs, and are knee deep in debt. Naturally, they are compelled to take the first job that offers them a decently salary and a health insurance plan regardless of their actual interest in the particular job or industry.

Welcome to the rat-race.

Hill would admonish me for focusing exclusively on the negatives so I will humbly labor to present some positive alternatives to the current model of higher education. Mind you, the current system operates under the institutional model and that is a large part of the problem. The best alternatives are individualized in nature thus they require a break from the institutional way of thinking; simply replacing one institutional model with another will never accomplish much of anything.

Where to start?

Life is meant to be lived. Life is about freedom. Governments and institutions infringe upon personal freedom but try to convince you they are morally justified in doing so. Despite these constant infringements, we have the ability to claim more individual freedom today than ever before in modern history. Technology is the great enabler. It is also the great decentralizer.

The college years are a time to learn how to live independently and to explore various interests and passions. As we have pointed out, college does a poor job of facilitating real learning. I would suggest that college also does a poor job of aiding students in learning to live independently. Cramming two eighteen-year-old kids into a room the size of a single office and forcing them to share a bathroom with even more eighteen-year-olds is not realistic prep for the real world unless the kids plan to live on a commune somewhere. Likewise, living with four or five other twenty-year-old kids in frat (and sorority) houses doesn’t really facilitate independent learning unless the kids want to make a career out of party planning.

At the same time, college towns are a great place to meet people with all kinds of backgrounds and cultures. They are also great places to meet people with similar passions and interests. This exposure certainly fosters a tolerance for different ideas as well as the potential to form lasting partnerships with others of like-mind.

College Alternatives Number One: What if our eighteen-year-old, instead of enrolling in college, simply moved to a college town of their choice? They could take on internships with local businesses for low (or no) pay to explore traditional career paths. They could organize or attend meet-up groups for students with similar passions to share ideas and knowledge. They could work to develop online business opportunities around those passions and interests to learn what works and what doesn’t. They could potentially sit-in on select classes of interest if they wanted to as well. Though the overall curriculum may largely be a waste of time, there are certainly individual classes that are interesting and valuable. Whether it’s art or computer programming or classic literature or astronomy or whatever, the professor would probably be thrilled to have someone in the class who is actually interested in what he has to say… everyone else is simply interested in getting a good grade and moving on within the system. And I am sure our eighteen-year-old would do all kinds of other interesting things that I have never thought of before also.

All with zero student loan debt. Sure there would be living expenses but they would pale in comparison to tuition, room, board, and textbooks. If the parents had employed the Infinite Banking Concept for our student then living expenses would already covered for several years at least.

College Alternatives Number Two: what if our hypothetical eighteen-year-old spent a year traveling internationally? They would experience all sorts of different worldviews and cultures and probably learn a foreign language or two in the process. Maybe they would observe a growing trend somewhere which could lead to a tremendous business or investment opportunity. Maybe they would become a freelance travel writer and make a career out of the experience. Maybe they would blog about their travel and build a readership that would lead to income opportunities. Maybe they would see an underserved community and start a niche charity dedicated to a singular mission.

College Alternatives Number Three: Suppose our eighteen-year-old has been homeschooled and permitted to develop skills around a particular passion already? He could go directly into his chosen field either by starting a business or by seeking out internships and mentors in the chosen industry. If he already knows what he would like his first career to be then there is no reason for him to pursue additional generalized education at this point. The beauty of this scenario is that our eighteen year old will have twenty years of experience in his industry by the young age of thirty-eight. In all likelihood financial success will have followed his career mastership and he will be free to then explore other interests or passions if he desires something new and exciting. The notion of working in a single industry for one’s entire life and then retiring to go fishing and piddle around the house all day is a New Deal relic that will die off when Social Security implodes. Mastering two or three different careers over one’s lifetime will be extremely common going forward. And following this individualized model will leave plenty of time for fishing and piddling should you so desire as well. After all, it’s not work if you are doing what interests you.

These are just three examples of many possible college alternatives. With a little vision and a little faith, anything is possible.

More to come,

Joe Withrow
Wayward Philosopher

For more of Joe’s thoughts on the “Great Reset” and the paradigm shift currently in motion please read “The Individual is Rising” which is available at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/. The book is also available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle editions.

The Ills of Compulsory Schooling Continued

submitted by jwithrow.

Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
The Ills of Compulsory Schooling Continued

January 30, 2015
Hot Springs, VA

The S&P opened at $2,019 today. Gold is down to $1,263 per ounce. Oil is still floating around $44 per barrel. Bitcoin is up slightly at $230 per BTC, and the 10-year Treasury rate opened at 1.70% today.

Yesterday we discussed the majesty that is childhood and we opined that compulsory schooling severely curtails the childhood experience and sets children up to struggle in adulthood. Today we will expand upon this and try to present a positive alternative.

First we must ask a question: why do we send our children to school?

Is it because we went to school when we were a child? Is it because we don’t have time to watch them during the day? Is it because we think they won’t learn unless they go to school? Is it because we think they must go to school in order to get into college? Is it because we think they need to go to school to learn social skills? Do we know?

Let’s glance back in time a little bit to the formative years of the modern school system:

“Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.” – William Torrey Harris, United States Commissioner of Education from 1889-1906

“Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished.” – Bertrand Russel, British philosopher

“Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society…” – John Dewey, “father of modern education”

Eww. The school’s history textbooks left those little tidbits out.

We are on the record saying the public school system fails but that’s not entirely true. The public school system certainly fails to foster critical thinking and self-reference but that’s by design. The public school system has actually been wildly successful when judged by its original mission.

What compulsory education really does is prepare our children for an institutionalized life of subordination. We send our children to school not so they can flower into beautiful individuals capable of accessing their infinite potential but rather to mold them into obedient worker bees that will willingly assimilate into the status-quo as maintained by the establishment (governments/central banks/Wall Street/multi-nationals/Big-Agra/Big-Pharma/Big-Insurance/Big-Science/mega non-profits). This is why the public school system exists. As we’ve mentioned many times, this is not an indictment of teachers and local school employees – most of them work diligently to improve their school. But how do you reform an institution that already wildly succeeds at doing what it was created to do?

In school our children learn to hide their true self by putting on a mask and conforming to whatever is popular. They learn to follow arbitrary rules and to unquestioningly obey the “authorities”. They learn to uncritically memorize whatever information is presented to them and to regurgitate that information back in a way that is pleasing to the teacher. They learn that their job is to sit quietly and listen to the teacher without interrupting; anything else requires explicit permission. They learn that grades are the sole measurement of success thus they are conditioned to constantly seek external confirmation. They learn that life is a series of hoops to be struggled through because their educational curriculum consists of a tiered system whereby students advance to the next “grade” year after year. Children are constantly told that getting good grades is necessary to get into a good college so it is implied that the purpose of life is to successfully navigate the current system in order to make it to the next system.

So after they have successfully navigated the public school system for twelve consecutive years our children are told to mindlessly rush off to whatever college will accept them. The school system has taught them absolutely nothing about money and finance but nevertheless our children are told to take on massive student loans to pay for the next step. Some public school guidance offices will even walk children through the student loan application process. “Don’t worry”, they are told, “you won’t have to start making payments until a few years after you graduate.”

So they get to college and most students view it in the same light – as a series of hoops to jump through to get to the next level. Now the goal is to maintain a good G.P.A. so they can get a good job. A few frat parties later they find themselves completing college and going to university sponsored job fairs.

What comes next? The 8-5, new suits, public transportation, parking passes, a promotion, a new car, a mortgage, a promotion, marriage, children, a new mini-van, a promotion, a home equity line to renovate the kitchen and the next thing you know our children are middle aged, stuck in a mindless career, deep in debt, and stressed to the max. They have spent the vast majority of their time working a desk job to pay for their car, their house, their vacations, and their weekend entertainment because that is what they were conditioned to do. Sure, there are plenty of people who have found fulfillment following this path but there are far more who have not.

Suppose we changed the script? What if our children were provided the time and freedom to discover and pursue their passion at a young age? What if they were not herded into school for twelve years but instead spent that time learning about themselves and the world around them? What if they developed useful skills instead of mindless dogma?

What if they then deemed college to be a waste of time and money and instead crafted a superior higher-education curriculum. The possibilities for this are endless!

Maybe they spend one year traveling the world to learn about other cultures first hand. Maybe they find a compelling opportunity during their travels and set up an international business or charity dedicated to meeting real needs and demand. Maybe they come back and seek out an internship with a master in a field they are passionate about. Maybe they skip the internship and start their own business in their chosen field. Maybe they set out to build multiple microbusinesses designed to provide diverse income streams. Maybe they decide to pursue a specialized career and seek out additional education in that field. Maybe they decide to purchase an old neglected farm and spend their days healing the land and producing superior food products.

The point is this script would allow our children to make mindful decisions about how to spend their time free from modern society’s incessant dogma aimed at guilting people into feeling the need to fit in. This script would also allow for much greater flexibility if our children decided to change careers or lifestyles at a later time – which would be extremely common. The notion of working one job for forty years and then retiring is an unnatural New Deal relic that will soon be extinct. This model is simply not viable in any capacity; the economics just do not work.

Life is not a series of rigid systems to struggle through until retirement; it is a robust opportunity for temporal exploration and spiritual growth. It would be a shame to waste such an opportunity.

More to come,

Joe Withrow
Wayward Philosopher

For more of Joe’s thoughts on the “Great Reset” and the paradigm shift underway please read “The Individual is Rising” which is available at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/. The book is also available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle editions.