On education

It's the start of the new year and all over the country students (or are they called learners now?) are receiving their matric results. The lucky ones will have the opportunity to further their studies at a university and the others will lament over how their lives are completely ruined by not having that opportunity.

Personally, I think that tertiary education is a privilege - not a right, but even if we ignore that and if we came up with some magical way that we could give every single person a university education... it would kill our society.

I agree that education is a necessity of modern life; ignorance should be fought tooth and nail wherever it is found, but... and it is a BIG 'but'... our world still needs plumbers, receptionists, gardeners, traffic cops, construction workers, carpenters, welders and the like. Why do we look down on these people who provide such necessary services to our society? If we accorded them the respect and consideration that their hard work deserves, then wouldn't they feel better about themselves? Wouldn't that increase the sum total of happiness in the world? Wouldn't that be a good thing?

Moral of the story: don't be an elitist jack-ass.

"Never take a person's dignity; it is worth everything to them, and nothing to you"           - Frank Barron

Word of the Week

Apparatchik - noun

1. a member of a Communist apparat.


2. an official blindly devoted to superiors or to the organisation

In the News

Kinect for PC - I can't wait to get my hands on one of these

Emotion recognition in robots - this should make it far easier to interact with robots and machines... imagine if the M$ paper-clip had this?

Amateur discovers 4 planets without a telescope - ordinary people doing extraordinary things... /inspired

5 gadgets to watch from CES - a small report from the Customer Electronics Show... cool stuff

10 websites to watch in 2011 - some say we're heading into another internet bubble... but there are people doing some very cool things.