TEE SHEEPSKIN PSYCHOSIS

This little college grad went to market. This little college grad went to market. This little college grad went to market. And this littler high school grad went to market, too. But he was forced, if not to run back home again, at least to take some courses at night. For the market place abounded in sheepskin. It happened for any number of reasons right after World War II. The college diploma became what it is today: ""an indispensable condition of employment,"" decent employment at any rate. Is this not as it should be? Well, John Keats says ""no."" But ""yes"" or ""no"" is not really the point. The point is that we have, as a society, strayed far afield from the only premise that makes any sense about college: it is ""merely the most convenient place to learn how to learn."" Education is not training. Training is not education. A college degree is no proof that its bearer has learned how to learn. And a bearer who has learned how to learn is not necessarily well qualified to do most of the jobs that require a college education. Nonetheless, the market place didactic says, ""You gotta go to college!"" So mothers fight to get their kids into the ""right"" nursery school, so they will be accepted by the ""right"" elementary school, so the ""right"" high school will say yes, so that a stairway-to-the-buck Ivy League College might approve. A generation of kids is being tutored, primed, pumped, and palped. A boy in Harvard has no idea why he's there... John Keats could have organized his book more logically, and he should have jettisoned a Sex On Campus chapter. But he makes good sense most of the time.