By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
A reader called my attention to a column by Richard Lederer from his website Verbivore. In it, Lederer offered his readers a long list of words and phrases that most older Americans will recognize right away, but will leave younger readers scratching their heads. I won’t give you his entire list; it is too long. But if you do an Internet search with your key words “Lederer and Old Words and Phrases,” it will give you access to the web page. I recommend that you take a look; it is a fun read.
But just to whet your appetite, I’ll give you a few examples. When was the last time you heard someone say, “You sound like a broken record,” “That was swell,” “Put on your best bib and tucker,” “Living the life of Riley,” or you saw “Kilroy was here” on a bathroom wall? What would your grandchildren think if you exclaimed, “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” or “That’s a fine kettle of fish.”
“Where,” asks Lederer, have all these phrases gone: “It’s your nickel. Knee high to a grasshopper. Iron Curtain. Domino theory. Fail safe. You look like the wreck of the Hesperus. Cooties. Going like sixty. I’ll see you in the funny papers. Don’t take any wooden nickels.” He concludes that “there are words that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in our collective memory.”
Lederer is correct: Modern educators need not be saddled with the responsibility of introducing their students to the meaning of “the life of Riley” or “best bib and tucker.” But the “domino theory” and “Iron Curtain” are a different matter. Treating the vernacular of the past as irrelevant can be as much a mistake as the trend in some school districts and schools of education to no longer teach children how to read or write in cursive.
Apparently it is a trend that is gaining some steam. Many readers of this column will recall Rachel Jeantel, the witness about 20 years of age in the trial of George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin, who told the judge she could not read a piece of evidence handed to her by the judge because “I don’t read cursive.”
It was a sad sight. While it may be true that in the computer era an educated person can get by printing by hand or with a word processor, the average American for the foreseeable future is going to come across things written in cursive, everywhere from personal letters to restaurant menus. Something does not become obsolete merely because it is old-fashioned. One can only hope that modern educators understand that.
On another topic: the necessity of attending college. Robert Reich, secretary of labor during the Clinton administration and now a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, offered some valuable observations on the topic on the website The Huffington Post on March 23. You may be suspicious of Reich because of his long track record as a limousine liberal, but, as they say, even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut.
Reich writes of high school seniors he knows who go through great anxiety this time of year, waiting at their mailboxes to see if they will be accepted by the college of their choice. “Parents are also uptight. I’ve heard of some who have stopped socializing with other parents of children competing for admission to the same university.”
Reich concedes that graduating from “top-brand colleges” can be valuable: “A degree from a prestigious university can open doors to elite business schools and law schools — and to jobs paying hundreds of thousands, if not millions, a year. So parents who can afford it are paying grotesque sums to give their kids an edge. They ‘enhance’ their kid’s resumes with such things as bassoon lessons, trips to preserve the wildlife in Botswana, internships at the Atlantic Monthly. They hire test preparation coaches. They arrange for consultants to help their children write compelling essays on college applications. They make generous contributions to the elite colleges they once attended, to which their kids are applying — colleges that give extra points to ‘legacies’ and even more to those from wealthy families that donate tons of money.”
He adds, “You might call this affirmative action for the rich. Excuse me, but this is nuts. The biggest absurdity is that a four-year college degree has become the only gateway into the American middle class.”
You may have heard before what Reich says next, but it bears repeating. First of all, “not every young person is suited to four years of college. They may be bright and ambitious but they won’t get much out of it. They’d rather be doing something else.” They “feel compelled to go to college only because they’ve been told over and over that a college degree is necessary. Yet if they start college and then drop out, they feel like total failures. Even if they get the degree, they’re stuck with a huge bill — and may be paying down their student debt for years. And all too often the jobs they land after graduating don’t pay enough to make the degree worthwhile.”
What does he offer as an alternative? “Last year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 46 percent of recent college graduates were in jobs that don’t even require a college degree. . . . America clings to the conceit that four years of college are necessary for everyone, and looks down its nose at people who don’t have college degrees. This has to stop. Young people need an alternative. That alternative should be a world-class system of vocational-technical education. A four-year college degree isn’t necessary for many of tomorrow’s good jobs.
“For example, the emerging economy will need platoons of technicians able to install, service, and repair all the high-tech machinery filling up hospitals, offices, and factories.”
He calls for an end to the “denigration” of vocational and trade schools as if those who attend them are “losers.” He points to Germany, whose technical schools turn out young people with “world-class technical skills that have made Germany a world leader in fields such as precision manufacturing.” He believes our community colleges could take the lead in developing comparable curricula in this country, with businesses advising them on the technical skills that their graduates will need to succeed in the workplace.
Reich’s hope is that doing this will end the practice of “pushing most of our young people through a single funnel called a four-year college education — a funnel so narrow it’s causing applicants and their parents excessive stress and worry” and to an education “that’s too often ill suited and unnecessary, and far too expensive; and that can cause college dropouts to feel like failures for the rest of their lives. It’s time to give up the idea that every young person has to go to college, and start offering high school seniors an alternative route into the middle class.”
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford CT 06492.
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