'Meaningful Work'
by Thomas Sowell
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"Education"
is a word that covers a lot of very different things, from vital,
life-saving medical skills to frivolous courses to absolutely counterproductive
courses that fill people with a sense of grievance and entitlement,
without giving them either the skills to earn a living or a realistic
understanding of the world required for a citizen in a free society.
The lack of
realism among many highly educated people has been demonstrated
in many ways.
When I saw
signs in Yellowstone National Park warning visitors not to get too
close to a buffalo, I realized that this was a warning that no illiterate
farmer of a bygone century would have needed. No one would have
had to tell him not to mess with a huge animal that literally weighs
a ton, and can charge at you at 30 miles an hour.
No one would
have had to tell that illiterate farmer's daughter not to stand
by the side of a highway, trying to hitch a ride with strangers,
as too many college girls have done, sometimes with results that
ranged all the way up to their death.
The dangers
that a lack of realism can bring to many educated people are completely
overshadowed by the dangers to a whole society created by the unrealistic
views of the world promoted in many educational institutions.
It was painful,
for example, to see an internationally renowned scholar say that
what low-income young people needed was "meaningful work." But this
is a notion common among educated elites, regardless of how counterproductive
its consequences may be for society at large, and for low-income
youngsters especially.
What is "meaningful
work"?
The underlying
notion seems to be that it is work whose performance is satisfying
or enjoyable in itself. But if that is the only kind of work that
people should have to do, how is garbage to be collected, bed pans
emptied in hospitals or jobs with life-threatening dangers to be
performed?
Does anyone
imagine that firemen enjoy going into burning homes and buildings
to rescue people trapped by the flames? That soldiers going into
combat think it is fun?
In the real
world, many things are done simply because they have to be done,
not because doing them brings immediate pleasure to those who do
them. Some people take justifiable pride in working to take care
of their families, whether or not the work itself is great.
Some of our
more Utopian intellectuals lament that many people work "just for
the money." They do not like a society where A produces what B wants,
simply in order that B will produce what A wants, with money being
an intermediary device facilitating such exchanges.
Some would
apparently prefer a society where all-wise elites would decide what
each of us "needs" or "deserves." The actual history of societies
formed on that principle – histories often stained, or even drenched,
in blood – is of little interest to those who mistake wishful thinking
for idealism.
At the very
least, many intellectuals do not want the poor or the young to have
to take "menial" jobs. But people who are paying their own money,
as distinguished from the taxpayers' money, for someone to do a
job are unlikely to part with hard cash unless that job actually
needs doing, whether or not that job is called "menial" by others.
People
who lack the skills to take on more prestigious jobs can either
remain idle and live as parasites on others or take the jobs for
which they are currently qualified, and then move up the ladder
as they acquire more experience. People who are flipping hamburgers
at McDonald's on New Year's Day are seldom flipping hamburgers there
when Christmas time comes.
Those relatively
few statistics that follow actual flesh-and-blood individuals over
time show them moving massively from one income bracket to another
over time, starting at the bottom and moving up as they acquire
skills and experience.
Telling young
people that some jobs are "menial" is a huge disservice to them
and to the whole society. Subsidizing them in idleness while they
wait for "meaningful work" is just asking for trouble, both for
them and for all those around them.
May
29, 2012
Thomas
Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other
Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators
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