|
| |
|
|
Why
Johnny Shouldn’t Go to College
by Mad Dog
|
Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to write software and he did okay for himself—he
ended up owning Earth. |
|
It starts at an early age. You know, the brain washing: graduate
high school, go to college, earn at least one degree, then get a job that pays lots of
money so you can live the American Dream and live happily ever after. The problem is, most
of us would rather hang out at the mall, go to Europe, earn lots of Frequent Flier Miles,
and win the American Family Publisher’s sweepstakes so we can live the American Dream
and live happily ever after. Of course that may not be possible much longer, seeing as how
Ed McMahon and Dick Clark are under fire for allegedly misleading people. Damn, we may
have to get an education and do it the hard way after all.
But now it’s looking like the traditional parental advice to get a higher education
may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Sure, there’s always been the traditional
"There are plenty of ways to get a good job and make good money without a lot of
education" line. And it can work. After all, plumbers do it. Auto mechanics do it.
Hell, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to write software and he did okay for
himself—he ended up owning Earth.
No, it
turns out the best reasons for not getting that extra degree are being espoused by
researchers. You know, the same people who tell us that smoking cigarettes is bad, eating
less fat is good, and movies based on Saturday Night Live skits can cause brain damage. Or
is that caused by brain damage? |
The study says that people who watch a lot of PBS are having more sex than those who watch
prime time TV! |
|
Anyway, it’s now being revealed that education is bad for your health. This
came to light in a study published in the February issue of American Demographics magazine
(motto: "They cut down trees for this?") which claims that the more education
you have the less sex you have. Who would have thought you’d trade one sheepskin for
another? The study also says that
married people have more sex, older people have less sex, and Presidents don’t have
improper relationships, though it doesn’t define an improper relationship. These are
hardly startling conclusions. After all, married people have readily available sex
partners, the older we get the more likely we are to forget to have sex, and Presidents,
well, they have a long-standing tradition to uphold, and after all, if our leaders
can’t be traditional, who can?
It would be easy to assume that the reason
highly educated people aren’t having much sex is because they’re busy trying to
decipher the latest Pynchon novel, watching French movies subtitled in Latin, having long
discourses about the relative merits of the buckyball, and watching billions and billions
of science shows on PBS. But apparently this isn’t true. Oddly enough, the study says
that people who watch a lot of PBS are having more sex than those who watch prime time TV!
It’s doubtful this is caused by the
high arousal factor of Miss Marple. I hope. More than likely it’s the result of
extreme boredom during Part 17 of Ken Burns’ "Millard Filmore—A Man and his
ZZZZzzzzzz" series, the sight of yet another British comedian running around the
countryside in drag, and the fact that prime time viewers consistently fall asleep at the
beginning of Suddenly Susan and don’t wake up until the Today show. |
This will put a whole new spin on those personality tests children take in school. Would
you rather read a book or eat a pound of dirt? |
|
But there’s another possibility. Another recent study—which is just
what we needed—says the more education you have, the more likely you are to get
headaches. As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (motto:
"Thank God for drug company advertising."), only 30% of men and 38% of women
with high school diplomas have problems with headaches. Meanwhile, 49% of those with
graduate degrees do. This raises an
important question: Do highly educated people have less sex because they have more
headaches? Or do they get more headaches because they’re not getting enough sex?
Personally, I’m getting a headache just thinking about it.
This will put a whole new spin on those
personality tests children take in school. Instead of asking the usual questions, like
whether you’d rather read a book or eat a pound of dirt, or whether you’d rather
go to the opera or dance in the middle of the street naked while singing the Star Spangled
Banner, they’ll offer a whole new set of options. Like: Would you rather get a
masters degree or live a life free from headaches? Or: Would you rather get a Ph.D. and
win the admiration of everyone around you or have sex?
When you put it that way, dropping out of
high school doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
©1998 Mad Dog Productions, Inc. All
Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country. Read
them instead of going to class.
|
|
|
