Quote:
Originally Posted by py3ak  I think it's interesting that in OT Israel there was provision made for people without ambition. When a servant decided he liked working for his master, he could become a servant for life. Basically, he's going to go through life with his expenses paid and with something to do to keep busy, but not a lot else. But there is no moral stigma attached to someone who took that alternative. But what a gap is there between that and the American Dream? There are people unsuited to the American Dream, and I think it's high time we stopped introducing some sort of societal or even ecclesiastical frowning on that as though it were somehow second best. |
I think this is what the author of the article is getting at. The mantra - promoted especially by political liberals after World War II - is that
everyone must go to college after high school. That surely was the obsession among guidance counselors when I was in high school (1967-1970). It was simply assumed that virtually everyone would attend college.
Our society has trained itself to look down on people who work with their hands instead of their minds. But, as with the lifetime servant in ancient Israel, some people actually
like being janitors, farmers, plumbers, painters, electricians, woodworkers, carpenters, stonemasons, grocery store clerks, etc., etc. American society today seems to have no respect for people who have a talent for hands-on craftsmanship - someone who knows how to make a beautiful cabinet, for example. If you haven't been to college and earned that piece of paper, then gone on to get a job in a cubicle in some bureaucracy somewhere, you're a failure. It's unfathomable to this way of thinking that some people not only
like working with their hands, they're actually
good at it and can actually
make a living at it.
After all, goes the thinking, only the ignorant and those in the "lower classes" work with their hands...
Higher education is a wonderful thing, but it's not for everyone...
__________________
Richard T. Zuelch, M.Div
Ruling Elder, OPC (not currently serving)
Westminster Presbyterian Church, CA (OPC)
www.reiterations.wordpress.com www.foft.wordpress.com
"When I cease to preach salvation by faith in Jesus, put me into a lunatic asylum, for you may be sure that my mind is gone." - Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892)