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Of course we always hear how College is for everyone and if people go to college, work hard they can get a degree and have a chance at having some nice salary or at least significantly above minimum wage.
My question is, are there men/women out there that are not mentally challenged or have some debilitating physical/mental challenge yet just simply don't have the aptitude for college, studying, etc.? Basically those that can really only ever be good at low service jobs or jobs that don't require much skill? As in spend most/all of their lives doing menial work or work that doesn't require lots of mental ability.
Of course there is. It's hard to teach a dog new tricks and life is short.. it really goes by fast... before you know it 5 years have gone by and a person is 23.. then another 5 years... perhaps they got someone pregnant... at 18 it's hard to know what one wants out of life.. it takes until 30 before most people start to really 'get it' .. and by then it can be financially difficult to just start over in college.
Some don't want to deal with the stress.. some don't have the discipline.. some, such as myself, despise the paperwork, regulations, and ridiculous tax code... others may have found a decent paying job only to be laid off and find the job market sucks now as far as wages go...
Not everyone is driven to 'change the world' or 'make their mark' and cares about having a career, busting their butt 80 hours a week, etc. Some want to leave their work at work, and relax a bit more...
Some don't have the social skills, and don't learn them as they should.. others may not have the IQ. There is a genetic part to this as well.. it's obvious at very young ages which young kids are destined to do more and which are not... aside from how their parents act there's definite behavior patterns that develop at a young age.. my nephew is much more extroverted than any of the relatives who take care of him.
I'm grateful to have found a living wage blue collar job that is basically depression-proof.... I can be a 'lifer' here.. this plant is not shutting down and they are no where near being able to produce the products we produce here at any of their other hundreds of plants worldwide. If a tornado destroyed the plant I'd look at it as an opportunity to start over fresh though.. in a warmer climate.
My question is, are there men/women out there that are not mentally challenged or have some debilitating physical/mental challenge yet just simply don't have the aptitude for college, studying, etc.?
[quote=PeaceAndLove42;40000325]Of course we always hear how College is for everyone and if people go to college, work hard they can get a degree and have a chance at having some nice salary or at least significantly above minimum wage.
quote]
That's the BIG LIE from the education establishment. Truth is, not everyone is fit for college. There are some people that, no matter how hard they try, for whom "do you want fries with that?" is a stretch goal.
We seem to have no problem understanding that some people are star athletes and some who aren't. Why can we not accept that in academics?
We seem to have no problem understanding that some people are star athletes and some who aren't. Why can we not accept that in academics?
because academics isn't about "winning" knowledge... it's about gaining it for yourself. Sure not everyone can be a star athlete, but everyone can learn to throw a ball. That's why academics is different. College might be graded, but even without the grades, people should attend college to broaden their horizon because most people don't have the resources to travel the world and learn it first hand. So college collects as much of the things from around the world (art/history/culture/music/science/etc) and puts its it all into one place. Its why college is a good place to learn, because it collects information/experts from the field that you are interested in, and you learn from them so you don't have to spend time making the same mistakes and then rediscovering the same things over and over. It's why it is useful to have a degree for a job too, because it accelerates that learning. A programmer can learn to code in a matter of months vs years if they are self taught. A culinary student can learn to cook using methods around the world. A doctor can learn about the human body without having to kill people in the process because other people already died and they learned from it
I'm a proponent of college/education but college isn't there to point someone in how to live their life, that's where people mistake college for these days. They think they can get a degree and suddenly have a path open to them. College just provides them with a map, it doesn't tell them what path to take or even if there is one, they might have to make it themselves
Of course we always hear how College is for everyone and if people go to college, work hard they can get a degree and have a chance at having some nice salary or at least significantly above minimum wage.
My question is, are there men/women out there that are not mentally challenged or have some debilitating physical/mental challenge yet just simply don't have the aptitude for college, studying, etc.? Basically those that can really only ever be good at low service jobs or jobs that don't require much skill? As in spend most/all of their lives doing menial work or work that doesn't require lots of mental ability.
Absolutely not. You can do what you put your mind to. I know people who went to school, and they ended up dropping out because they couldn't deal with the commitment. I know people who stayed in school, but things took longer than 4 years for one reason or another, and these may have had nothing to do with them. I was one of those people. Suddenly, they changed my curriculum, stopped counting something I had already taken and added some things on for me to take. Then there are guys who get the degree, but won't do what they need to advance in their career (There was a guy I worked with that had the same degree from the same school and was making the same amount as me. The difference was that he graduated 8 years beforehand...)
I suppose I'm one of those people. This year I made the most I have ever made in my life, about $15 or so. I have a 15 minute commute, and my job gets left at work as soon as I punch the clock. Best thing about it is that I'm hourly, so I get paid overtime when I'm asked to stay. My bosses put in 60-70 hours a week for salary and are only paid for 45 hours or so. I work 40 hours a week which is a good balance between work and life. 1:30-2 hour commutes into a high COL area, business suits, and climbing the ladder have never interested me.
Of course we always hear how College is for everyone and if people go to college, work hard they can get a degree and have a chance at having some nice salary or at least significantly above minimum wage.
My question is, are there men/women out there that are not mentally challenged or have some debilitating physical/mental challenge yet just simply don't have the aptitude for college, studying, etc.? Basically those that can really only ever be good at low service jobs or jobs that don't require much skill? As in spend most/all of their lives doing menial work or work that doesn't require lots of mental ability.
I have siblings in this category. They chose not to pursue education and instead got into their careers from the bottom up and they've achieved that middle class success. They decided that college wasn't their thing and adjusted accordingly.
There are some people who are stuck in low wage jobs through the course of their life due to decisions made earlier that perhaps can not be undone. Maybe you were a cutup in school so you dropped out when you were 16, became a single parent at 17 and started down the path of poverty. If you don't have a proper support system, you can't go to school to correct your mistakes and you pass along that life style to your child(ren). You end up a grandparent at 35. To help your child have a better life than you did, rather than go to college, you take on the burden of grandchild care so your child can go to college.
I'm sure there are some people who stay at low wage jobs for reasons I can't understand, but I don't think many would choose it. If you were born and raised in a low wage, manual labor type home, college might not be something that figures into your future because it's not something you were exposed to as a thing one automatically does after finishing high school. It's simply not a thought-of option for some people because "college" is reserved for those who have more time and money. But people who were born/raised in a "you must go to college" type atmosphere can't understand that, and I think those parents raised in that environment would probably have a harder time accepting a decision of their child to go blue collar.
I have siblings in this category. They chose not to pursue education and instead got into their careers from the bottom up and they've achieved that middle class success. They decided that college wasn't their thing and adjusted accordingly.
There are some people who are stuck in low wage jobs through the course of their life due to decisions made earlier that perhaps can not be undone. Maybe you were a cutup in school so you dropped out when you were 16, became a single parent at 17 and started down the path of poverty. If you don't have a proper support system, you can't go to school to correct your mistakes and you pass along that life style to your child(ren). You end up a grandparent at 35. To help your child have a better life than you did, rather than go to college, you take on the burden of grandchild care so your child can go to college.
I'm sure there are some people who stay at low wage jobs for reasons I can't understand, but I don't think many would choose it. If you were born and raised in a low wage, manual labor type home, college might not be something that figures into your future because it's not something you were exposed to as a thing one automatically does after finishing high school. It's simply not a thought-of option for some people because "college" is reserved for those who have more time and money. But people who were born/raised in a "you must go to college" type atmosphere can't understand that, and I think those parents raised in that environment would probably have a harder time accepting a decision of their child to go blue collar.
I totally understand and agree with what you said, however, my post was more about those that while not mentally challenged regardless if whether they have a great support system and friends/family saying they should attend college simply can't study/understand on the level needed to get through college/university.
For example, I know an aquaintance that has a 29 year old daughter. She is by no means mentally/physically challenged but you can see she is different, she passed HS with a 2.5 GPA, took two semesters of community college (two different times) and dropped out saying it's just all too much for her and she just can't understand the school work and she has worked very minimal wage jobs in her small town her life. Right now she works as a cart pusher at wal mart sweating her arse off in 90+ degree heat for the past 2 years. She is quite capable of having long intellectual talks about things she's interested in though.
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