OF A GOLDEN AGE

Ahhh, Ta-Nehisi Coates:

“[A] relationship couldn’t be about talking to other people. It couldn’t be about telling other people what I was gonna do; it had to be about the actual work. From that perspective, a wedding was abominable to me. It was the antithesis of everything I wanted–a vain spectacle of love, when love is to be demonstrated, it is to be done, it is to be worked like a job. Was it Andrew [Sullivan] who said religion is what you do when no one is looking? That was what we wanted out of our relationship. To always be about our business when no one was looking, and then when people were looking they would see the truth.”

So many rituals we’re assigned in our lives are so-called vain spectacles: pomp-and-ceremony weddings, elaborate engagements, gift-demanding showers for each new baby. As Carrie Bradshaw points out in an episode of Sex and the City:

“If I don’t get married or have a baby, what, I get bubkes*? Think about it. After graduation there is not one event that is just about you.”

She doesn’t specify which graduation she means, but presumably it isn’t high school, which is as close to required as possible. College brings up a whole different list of issues:

Should we require the SATs and other standardized tests? Do they accurately predict success in college?

Is there something wrong with students who are simply not suited to college?

I take massive issue with the idea that four-year college or beyond is the way for every student to succeed. Yes, it is right for many, and an emphatic YES that each able, willing, wanting student should (in a perfect, or just less-imperfect, world) have the opportunity to study at a four-year school. But that doesn’t mean everyone should, and I think it’s crippling to a lot of students when they find they simply don’t do well in a college environment.

What’s wrong with pursuing a trade? We’ll always need able, smart, well-trained people to install, troubleshoot, and maintain all kinds of things: the electrical wiring in your local schools, the radiator heat in my old apartment building, the grass-covered roof of a new LEED-certified green building. In a time of record social mobility and free exchange of information, why are we less tolerant than ever of those who make different choices?

* Did You Know: bubkes means “goat droppings.” In Yiddish, of course.

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