As we have seen in earlier chapters,
the American definition of success is largely one of acquiring wealth and a
higher material standard of living. It is not surprising, therefore, that
Americans have valued education for its monetary value. The belief is wide
spread in the United States that the more schooling people have, the more money
they will earn when they leave school. The belief is strongest regarding the
desirability of an undergraduate university degree, or a professional degree
such as medicine or law following the undergraduate degree. The money value of
graduate degrees in "nonprofessional" fields such as art, history, or philosophy
is not as great.
This belief in the monetary value of education
is supported by statistics on income. Ben Wattenberg, a social scientist,
estimated that in the course of a lifetime a man with a college degree in 1972
would earn about￥380. 000 more than a man with just a high school diploma.
Perhaps this helps to explain Survey findings which showed that Americans who
wished they had led their lives differently in some way regretted most of all
that they did net get more education.
The regret is shared by
those who have made it to the top and by those who have not. Journalist Richard
Reeves quotes a black worker in a Ford automobile factory.
"When
I was in the ninth grade, I was getting bad grades and messing around. My father
came home in the kitchen one night with a pair of Ford work punts and he threw
them in my face. ’Put these on,’ he said, ’because you’re going to be wearing
them the rest of your life if you don’t get an education. ’"
Douglas Fraser, the president of the United Auto Workers Union, regretted
not finishing high school so much that he occasionally lied about it. He told
Richard Reeves about his pride in graduating from high school, but then a few
minutes later he said:
"I wasn’t telling the truth about high
school. I never finished. I quit in the twelfth grade to take a job... It’s
funny after all these years, I still lie about it. Because the fact is, I still
think it was a stupid thing to do. I should have finished my
education."
Even a man like Fraser, a nationally known and
successful leader, was troubled by regrets that he did not climb higher on the
educational ladder. |
