Americans don’t like intellectuals. Americans distrust the academia. We call the valedictorian a nerd. We venerate the captain of the football team or the college drop out who starts working. Its how we’re wired and its what makes us great. Americans don’t look to books for answers they look to action. We want have a distortion field about what has failed and think, “not when I do it, its going to work”. Its our exact lack of traditional value on degrees that makes us great.
We’re a nation of non-understanding, non-thinkers who learn and succeed by doing.
Academics will lament our dropping math and science scores but there is no direct correlation between a countries level of education and its economic well being. Is Finland rich? Is Sweden an economic power? How about Canada? Or even the disciplinarian Japanese? Nope – stagnant for over a decade. Those top educated countries are wealthy but not gang busting super growth nations? The grow this coming from countries hustling and unleashing risk takers.
Its like Crash said to Nuke LaLoosh in Bull Durham, “Don’t think, just pitch” – meaning take action and stop studying. The try and error of action has more value than the $100,000 degree you Gert in History.
