The Anchoress talks about credentialing and its limits

[wombat_socho]

Uncredentialed Wonder | First Things:

He has authored over a dozen books, written a syndicated newspaper column and countless essays and articles covering a broad range of subjects—sports, politics, mobsters, union thugs, cultural touchstones, booze, and blades of grass—all of it written in a smart, literate voice of the casual sophisticate who takes his subject, but not himself, seriously. And in the summer of 2010, Pete Hamill finally received an honorary graduate’s diploma from Regis High School, a Jesuit-run prep school from which he dropped out 59 years earlier. “It was the last period when you could do that and still have a life,” Hamill told the New York Times. “Try getting a job on a newspaper now without the résumé.”

There´s some other surprises in this article. Well worth reading.

Comments

[edwarddain.livejournal.com]

Good article. As someone who was essentially self-educated for most of my adult life it makes a great deal of sense. Despite being "gifted" I hated school though I loved learned. I graduated in the bottom quarter of my high school class, and only attended jr. college for about a year-and-a-half before dropping out - I only went back to school twenty years later for the marathon run that resulted in my shiny new doctorate because I was tired of doing the other things I'd been doing (worked in the trades as a carpenter for about seven years, retail managment and purchasing, and a short stint in corporate site/account management, and a whole slew of basic odd jobs).

I don't regret any of it. I learned a great deal about people, about myself, and I kept reading. At my Catholic university the professor was amazed not because I could have tested out of their Western Civ class, but because I could clearly have tested out of it with the specific focus they had rather than just a generalist perspective. My lit teacher, was happy to let me into the Lit degree's capstone course despite none of the pre-req's because I obviously knew what I was talking about and ended up contributing more to the discussion than most of the Lit majors.

Bah, college is a series of hoops to jump through for the piece of paper. Education comes from engaging in subjects and learning. These two things are not always related...

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

I liked school well enough (until I got to junior high school, anyway) since I've always liked reading and writing, but I always resented how non-academic stuff always wedged its way into everything else, as if "school spirit" and secondary school sports would mean anything to me or my classmates four years down the road, much less forty.

Completely agree with you about education. The things I am best known for, I daresay, have little to do with the things I studied in college.