No. None of that is making a rodent's posterior's worth of difference to your earning capacity or the richness of your personal life.
Let me guess. You are getting where you ar,e not due to your literature criticism skills, but because of your skills with people. Maybe we should teach more of that kind of thing:
Perhaps old Flashman knew what he was on about. Recognise and kowtow to authority. The manager is always right, even if she's wrong. Does it matter if your argument is based on the best science? Does it matter if you can prove that she's wrong? Not on your career! You are going with what she wants for no better reason than that she is the manager. The boss is always right. Of course, this logic got the French into a continent wide war in Europe - which they lost (Napolen), the Americans into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - which they are in the process of losing (Bush), and the British into thinking that the swamps of Botany Bay were a great place to start a colony - which it wasn't (Joseph Banks). You can learn from history, and avoid the condemnation of repeating its mistakes, provided those mistakes are not something like "we followed the leader". Never learn that lesson. Your job depends on your ignorance.
You will also never learn at school that most people - most of us - are stupid. This is because of universal education. The obvious implication - that 80% of the classroom are designed to be repeat consumers of weight management programs - is far too ugly to be included in any curriculum. But it's a useful lesson nonetheless. The conscientious media are fighting an increasingly futile battle trying to get us to maintain the rage about the lies that politicians tell - the broken election promises. Why is this news? There seems to be a deal; that we expect our leaders to make promises about the future, thus assuming that they have crystal balls (I'm going to leave that joke alone), so that we don't have to deal with any uncertainty or surprises. So we vote for them. Then we get all righteous when they fail to deliver. Every election cycle in every democratic country goes through this process. Why do people believe that politicians can foresee and manage the future any better than another human being? Why are we so surprised when, yet again, it turns out that they didn't tell us the whole truth about their intentions? Why? Because most of us are stupid.
The third lesson your science teacher will never teach you is that appearance is more important than function. This is the lesson of Betamax. For those of you not old enough to remember the VCR, Betamax was a tape that was smaller and better quality than its main competitor, VHS. Who won out in the end? Well, no one, because we got DVDs, but, for a few short years, VHS was supreme. Those of us whose parents, falling for the lie that the public would choose the better quality product, bought a Betamax machine, were condemned to the three shelves of videos available at the local store while everyone else's parents, who knew that quality never triumphs over good marketing, got to choose from a warehouse full of fascinating titles. Why are science and maths compulsory to year 12 and marketing is only taken as a small element of media studies? What good are facts? No one cares very much! What we care about is:
1. Is it going to get us laid? and
2. Is it going to get other people to be envious of us?
If the answer is no to both of those questions, then expect to spend the rest of your career, like Jodie Foster in Contact, begging for scraps from the table to do your research and fighting tooth and nail to get your message heard above the sexy saxophone soundtrack of your well-heeled competitors.
The only conclusion I can draw is that the curriculum is written by dreamers; people who hope that , one day - one beautiful, perfect, day - we will all awaken from our drug induced slumber and realise that thought is better than instinct and that the truth is better than an eternally disappointed promise of sex.
And we wonder why kids disengage....
If you're reading and you like it, please leave me a comment. I'd love to know who's out there. Please also share this with your friends. I like to be liked but I like better being shared around.
The Flashman reference is to "Tom Brown's School Days". He was the bully in the story. If you would like another laugh, try George Macdonald Fraser's "Flashman" series. They pick up where "Tom Brown's School Days" left off. Very funny.
Sound and Fury is published every Monday and Thursday mornings, Australian Eastern Standard Time.
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