The title is a reference to the title of a speech given to the entering class at Chicago every year. Specifically, I was thinking of the 2002 address, which I think completely sums up my views on education.

Geddes, I agree with you almost entirely. Education is great. It makes people better, not only at their jobs, but at being people. Education is inherently valuable, and it enhances the lives of even the meanest people. So we all ought to have college degrees? This is where I disagree. Unfortunately, I’m having a devil of a time framing my critique in a way that isn’t terribly classist, so I’m going to come off just a bit offensive: to those who have the capacity for it, education is an unqualified good, far beyond its economic value. To those who don’t, education is wasteful.

This is a hard thing to justify; I’ll let my poetry speak to it:

A farmer boy once drove the plow,
‘Til a priest said “scripture learn thou!”
He studied all night,
As hard as he might,
But only a farm-boy is he now.

Seriously, I have no theoretical justification, just the facts: millions of people in this country have college degrees and nothing to show for them, except the same jobs that their high-school-educated parents had. Perhaps Aristotle makes secretaries better, but there’s been no evidence of that. Perhaps he makes them happier, but I think that there’s little evidence of that either. (and this is ignoring that many people with “degrees” aren’t learning Aristotle at all; in our culture of educational inflation, even menials have to go to undergrad, even if it only be to major in basket-weaving)