Everything Old Is New Again, Part 322

I have two sons, one a senior in high school and one a junior. The senior, I'm pleased to say, has just gotten into a university that we think will work very well for him. As you might gather, the application process (and the years of preparation beforehand) that is customary for people of our circle has involved much effort, planning, and anxiety for my wife and him and me, but finally that's over—as to the senior, that is: There's still the junior to shepherd through the process.

And it hit me the other day that I'm just like the mother in an 1800s English novel:

"Thank God, we got our older daughter married off; now we just need to do that for our younger."

Which in turn made me wonder: Will people in 2222 look back on the obsessions, mores, and pecking orders of early 21st century upper-middle-class life the way we look back on the early 19th?

Comments

[Abdul Abulbul Amir]

Yes.

[The Drill SGT]

yes, it's genetic destiny, reinforced by society.

[DaivdBehar]

By then the scam of high school and of college will have been obvious. I am writing a book, Adult at 14. That age is endorsed by biology, religion, and by 10000 years of human civilization. Move all grades up by two years. Come 14, go about getting an occupation. If you want to be a lawyer, go to law school. Your brain is far more fit to memorize the 7000 rules needed at 14 than at 24. We are wasting the most able years of life on a babysitting garbage scam service. The superiority of the legs of these people is exactly proportional to the superiority of their brain power.

[DaivdBehar]

Did Eugene's son publish a book in high school? I would like to read it.

[DaivdBehar]

To make my point, I would like to know who learns better, Eugene or his son? That is a experiment about age, controlling for genetics.

[MonitorsMost]

Eugene enrolled as a sophomore at UCLA when he was 12 years old and graduated with a degree in mathematics and computer science.

[DaivdBehar]

You are making my point, about 14, in the case of Eugene at 12. What would happen if he enrolled in college today in computer science. Could he pass a course at his age?

[DaivdBehar]

That controlled experiment would be in the same person, before and after aging.

[DaivdBehar]

What a tragic waste of brain power. Eugene went to law school. Imagine his wealth, his benefit to society, his impact had he stayed in computer science.

[DaivdBehar]

I am wondering if Eugene is subjecting his child to the sick fuck, Hate America indoctrination of the Ivy League.

[DaivdBehar]

The Ivy League is where you go to be trained for the failed elite running our government and legal institutions. You have to study80 hours to get straight A's. You emerge a real dumbass knowing shit about shit. You come out good at bullshitting. But at nothing else. The Ivy League needs to be shut down by force. Its assets should be seized in civil forfeiture.

[Amused Onlooker]

Of course. Someone is right now busy writing “Pride and Privilege”

[JohannesDinkle]

As an older parent, I suggest that the real relief is when they get a real job and are almost certainly not coming back home to live.

[Absaroka]

"I suggest that the real relief is when they get a real job and are almost certainly not coming back home to live."

We know several 30 somethings of the failure-to-launch variety, and my wife and I have talked about how our parents handled that. They never said a word, but they came of age during the Great Depression, and we somehow both absorbed the notion that laying around their house as a 30 year old who did not wish to work ... was not an option.

[Longtobefree]

It was always an option, just not in my house.
Our son came home from "somewhere" one night to find his clothes in a suitcase on the front porch.
(he wasn't 30, but he wasn't in school ,and he wasn't working)

[darkknight9]

Dad always said that when I turned 18, family tradition was to go to a bar and have a beer. Get the talk about making something of yourself, then you'd have till graduation from high school to get out.

He didn't have to have the talk with his own father (he was drafted) but his older brother got it.

I didn't have to get the talk (or beer) either. Dad said I wouldn't live to see 16, (I did obvs) but they kicked me out in January of my senior year @ 17. Its cold in January.

My two siblings faced no such familial social program.

[Ohio Lawyer]

",,,customary for people of our circle..." Sounds ominous.

Twenty years ago when we were going through this with our daughter, I made her choice simpler. I told her that her Mother and I will pay all your college expenses anywhere you want to go, except I will not write a check to an Ivy. No way I was sending my money to an inbred, pseudo-academic echo chamber.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

If a clinger school (perhaps one shackled by superstition) was acceptable, but an Ivy was not, I hope your daughter overcome her parents and became a productive member of mainstream American society.

[DaivdBehar]

OK, Boomer. When is it that you are resigning? You need to be replaced by a diverse illegales.

[Currentsitguy]

There are literally millions of very successful people in this country who have never seen the inside of an Ivy League school who have careers, homes, and families who have never once regretted their choice of educational institutions.

Only those with low self esteem who need the approbation of others to prop up their sense of worth care what name is on their diploma. The rest of us are more interested in your skill and what you have achieved.

[hobie]

Ohio Lawyer, be careful with that kind of talk around here. You're referring to the schooling of this blog's six favorite justices.

[bernard11]

Nothing like letting your own foolish prejudices interfere with your daughter's education.

[Snorkle]

As a non-breeder in the same economic bracket, I already look at it that way.

[dwb68]

In 2222 all the kids will have parents and grandparents and great grandparents, none of them will be you. Feel the irony?

[Armchair Lawyer]

That term "breeder" is offensive. Please don't use such bigoted terms.

[John F. Carr]

You worried about sending kids to the right expensive school when you could have all the information they will ever need freely delivered to their pods? Silly primitives.

[DaivdBehar]

Correct, Sir. No buildings. The very best kindergarten art teacher in the nation will teach art to all kindergarten students. Get rid of the rest. The best kindergarten art teacher in the country may be a bot by then. In which case, get rid of all teachers, as well. Maybe we will no longer need children either. Bots will teach bots. They will be top performers, who will listen, who will not soil their clothes, nor cry and make a scene.

[Cal Cetín]

Congratulations are presumably in order, and merry...oops, I mean Happy Hanukkan/Saturnalia/Festivus.

[apedad]

Of course they will and they'll see who the losers in the culture wars are (hint: the current losers).

They'll simply not understand how folks in the early 21st century could be against same-sex marriages, abortion, not caring about the environment, etc.

The same way we now can't fathom having slaves or women can't vote.

[Cal Cetín]

Maybe they'll have trouble understanding the brief interval in American history where slavery was prohibited and voting by the general population was encouraged.

You may have noticed that a major entertainment company recently did a miniseries with the most sympathetically-portrayed woman slaveholder since Scarlett O'Hara.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Indeed. One of the major crises of the 2100s is going to be the global depopulation crisis caused by the crashing fertility rate.

In a time of labor shortage, some countries which are poor but overpopulated may find it "advantageous" to "rent out" their citizens as labor.

[Nestor33]

There's a word for someone who thinks that people in the future will look back on today's anxieties that way: an optimist!

It used to be that colleges marketed their distinguished faculties and vast libraries; now many lead with their dining options and sports facilities. Classes have been dumbed down, and GPAs have been dumbed up. What are students looking to get out of the experience? "Networking." What do they actually get out of it? "Debt."

Meanwhile, parents look at elite college acceptance as some type of referendum on their own child-rearing, values and self-worth, putting misguided and unnecessary pressure on their children. People used to get this type of validation from organized religion, family tradition, ethical precepts, or genuine introspection.

Now, it they get it from USA Today.

[dwb68]

sort of.

getting kids married/off to college/ out of the house means they are independent and can live on their own.

The 2222 version may be something like "i just got our daughter on a ship to colonize Ceres, now we need to get our youngest ready"

[Pooneil]

Congratulations. I hope it was a learning experience for your senior and that he thrives in the college that he selected.

[ChrisC]

Both of my kids went to very good universities, but neither one got into their first choice school. I asked them after their graduations what would have happened if they had gotten into their first choice schools and gone there. They both said, "it would have been the worst decision of my life".

[Martinned]

Coming from a country where the university application process involves six years of not flunking out of high school and five minutes spent filling out an online form: Yes.

[Sebastian Cremmington]

The duke is coming over for dinner!! We must prepare a feast to impress him!

[AtR]

Congratulations Eugene! I had a very hard time finding reasonable college options for my children ... I'm glad that there are still a few schools left that are worthy of cheering.

[Roger S]

I went to a fancy Ivy League college, and fancy grad school, and I now believe the college admissions game is no longer worth playing. You can get just as good an education from a state college, and get just as good credentials.

Law is probably the worst profession in this regard. Not going to a top-10 law school is a handicap. Other professions do not care so much.

[David Nieporent]

You can't get just as good credentials at a state school, pretty much by definition. You can get just as good an education, but it requires more from you to do so.

What is the really big scam is the intermediate point between Ivy and state school. Paying Ivy prices and not getting an Ivy credential is insane. (I'm not using "Ivy" literally; there are a few other schools in that class, such as Stanford or Chicago or MIT, and of course in certain niches other schools may also be elite.)

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I hope, for the sake of the younger Volokhs, that the colleges are strong, liberal-liberal mainstream teaching and research institutions rather than one of the hundreds of fourth-tier, nonsense-teaching, censorship-shackled yahoo factories operated by conservatives.

When Prof. Volokh talks, and endorses candidates, and publishes partisan polemics, he's a clinger. But when his family chooses the state in which to reside, the educational institution by which to be employed, and -- I hope -- the schools his children are to attend, he abandons the clingerverse.

[Cal Cetín]

I hope the younger Volokhs go to Evergreen, it's a much more woke place than Stanford, Yale, or Harvard. Therefore it must be a much *better* place.

[Longtobefree]

Granted, the lawyering union is a bit different, but I used my degree once.
A degree, any degree, was required to get the application papers for my first job. After that, I got all my other jobs based on demonstrated skills at the previous job(s).
Graduated from a state college without debt, never looked back.
Life was simpler then - - - - - - - - - - - -

[hobie]

Congratulations professor Voloch. Liberty U is lucky to have them

[santamonica811]

Ouch. That strikes me as pretty unkind. 🙂

(And a bit off-target...whatever you might think of Eugene; you cannot say that he bends over backwards to favor religion.)

Is there a secular equivalent of a really low-tier secular university/college that fits the bill? [I'm trying to think of a general-ed, undergraduate, version of The South Texas College of Law.]

[The Drill SGT]

Texas A&M?

j/k Aggies

[darkknight9]

In other news, my son is starting 2 year college in a few weeks. His mother's father is reimbursing him for costs per semester (if he passes). He still wants to get into the pipe/steamfitters union. But I am terrified of his current thought for a major.

Political Science.

He wants to either pipefit or become a politician so he can 'help people'. The sentiment I get but... heavens help me.

[Absaroka]

My better half, a high school teacher, was asking some juniors what they were planning. One young lady replied 'Either a cosmetologist or a neurosurgeon'. As near as my wife could tell the young lady was serious. I suppose both careers take steady hands, so there's that.

[The Drill SGT]

Grats Eugene!

[JohnSteed]

What more could you do than get your offspring into schools they can graduate from without debt, are well rated by FIRE, and won’t be locking students in their dorms when the Omega variant comes out? Once they get their civil engineering degrees they can decide whether they want to seek a fancy masters program.

[Miss Greenparker]

Best not to "launch" one's progeny and, rather, to hide their lights under a barrel.

Debuts and Ivy League indoctrinations and entitlements may open doors and give one's spawn certain airs, but the beast system will subsume their individuality, darkly and materially construct and circumscribe the arcs of their lives, and corrupt their souls.

The higher predators will always feast upon their initiates, but it's not always obvious at first. The price is too high.

[Miss Greenparker]

Still, congratulations, as your son must be a superlative person. Many blessings upon him!