Just like our schools do!

Hooray, Johnny, you’ve come to school for 13 years and not killed anyone! Here’s your diploma! Hooray, Billy, you didn’t actually even come to school very much the last three years and you’ve been busted six times for marijuana possession, but you’re going to some Division I school on a basketball scholarship, so here’s your diploma!

No wonder our nation is failing… our workforce believes that they are entitled to all the benefits and none of the work - they’re told over and over in school that they’re special and good and perfect and, wonder of wonders, they actually believe it. While every person is created with some inalienable rights, a high-paying job isn’t one of them; that’s something you have to work for. And no, I don’t have one. Talent, motivation, and guidance are all necessary for results in any enterprise, but time is a critical element, and the discipline to work through that time. I think schools should teach kids discipline; I know that the business sector doesn’t generally care about a bachelor’s degree, and if all you have is a high school diploma, you may as well not apply, unless you intend to work as a janitor. Why? Because it doesn’t take anything to get a high school diploma today. All it takes to get a bachelor’s degree is a set of student loans and a few all-night study sessions to catch up after the debauchery of spring break.

In the end, this just hurts those of us who actually put work into our college degrees; those of us who spent our high school years pursuing advanced programs; those of us who paid our own money to spend spring break getting sunburned, not playing drunken games of volleyball on the beach, but building houses and churches or spreading the Gospel. It hurts us because there’s a stigma against us based on our age. I Timothy 4:12 is Paul telling Timothy that there’s a stigma against him based on his age, so I suppose it must have been going on forever; thank goodness Paul gave an answer - be an example, to your peers, to your elders, to those who follow behind.