Show School and I Horne Homo Horneby by Dr Daryl Doryl J J. J McCarty Executive Secretory Utah Education Association Learn to honor excellence The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education gives young people many reasons to pursue college degrees The commission determined from a study that college grads will reap such benefits as higher salaries better fringes more promotions a greater chance for continued employment employment employment em em- and be less likely to wind up in end dead jobs But theres there's much more to the story It seems we tend to place too high a priority on what we consider status careers Dont Don't get me wrong This country needs superb doctors imaginative architects and brilliant attorneys But we also need doodlebugs the too people who get dirty shoveling mud all day with exploration crews looking for tor oil And carpenters so skilled that the house they hammer together will stand many decades after they're In their graves Maybe we like to think of that kind of work being done by the theother theother theother other guys guy's kids not mine A tragedy of this situation is that if society does not hold manual skills and crafts in high regard some workers can lose the will to produce nothing but the best Another tragedy People who are pushed by their parents into becoming dentists when they'd rather be filling orders In a department store than filling teeth John Gardner summarized it all aU with a wise statement that he made about the situation He lie said We must learn to honor excellence indeed to demand it in every socially accepted human activity however humble the activity and to scorn shoddiness however exalted the activity An excellent plumber is infinitely tely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher The society which scorns excellence excellence ex ex- excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in phil philosophy ophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good phil philosophy ophy Neither its pipes nor its phil philosophy ophy will hold water |