There is a trend that emphasizes success and revolves around a successful career before anything. The financial aspects, being defined as the ends (not the means) are ruining the foundation of education and the well-being of society. I have had a philosophical clash with this mentality from the get-go. I've seen this ideology spread throughout the educational system and respected in professional spheres.
The concept of being this money-generating machine and obtaining this social status is dorky, stale, and in many instances, a fantastic breeding ground for concealed fascism while acting politically correct. There is no two ways around this pseudoscience of evolutionary humanism or societal classes founded upon god-given privileges. The consequent hubris is one of the prime examples of post-industrial banalities.
While this social superiority is attributed to inherent characteristics and essential differences, the root causes lie in a secure childhood in an affluent household and a protected track to a flourishing career. We witness a certain class arrogating to itself the right to be leaders as if being born in an affluent suburban neighborhood dismisses any need to hustle and bustle for a competitive position. The old stories of royal blood in someone's blood are as alive as ever.
These trends are anti-meritocracy, anti-progressive, anti-humanistic, and basically at odds with all the values the Enlightenment era bestowed upon Western civilization. As long ago as 1670, mankind embarked on pursuing happiness and progress regardless of an individual's indulgence in fantastic social classification or genetic lineage.
This notion is in line with a part of John Dewey's ideas that I recently read. The following lines are excerpted from "Democracy and Education", published in 1916. While Dewey shows the importance of having an education that empowers individuals and ultimately provides financial independence, he warns about the grave dangers of the "industrial education":
...social efficiency indicates the importance of industrial competency. Persons cannot live without means of subsistence; the ways in which these means are employed and consumed have a profound influence upon all relationships of persons to one another. If an individual is not able to earn his own living and that of the children dependent upon him, he is a drag or parasite upon the activities of others. He misses for himself one of the most educative experiences of life. if he is not trained in the right use of the products of industry, there is grave danger that he may deprave himself and injure others in his possession of wealth. No scheme of education can afford to neglect such basic considerations. Yet in the name of higher and more spiritual ideals, the arrangements for higher education have often not only neglected them, but looked at them with scorn as beneath the level of educative concern. With the change from an oligarchical to a democratic society, it is natural that the significance of an education which should have as a result ability to make one's way economically in the world, and to manage economic resources usefully instead of the mere display and luxury, should receive more emphasis.
There is however, grave danger that in insisting upon this end, exisiting economic conditions and standards will be accepted as final. A democratic criterion requires us to develop capacity to the point of competency to choose and make its own career. This principle is violated when the attempt is made to fit individuals in advance for definite industrial callings, selected not on the basis of trained original capacities, but on that of the wealth or social status of parents. As a matter of fact, industry at the present time undergoes rapid and abrupt changes through the evolution of new inventions. New industries spring up, and old ones are revolutionized. Consequently an attempt to train for too specific a mode of efficiency defeats its own purpose. When the occupation changes its methods, such individuals are left behind with even less ability to readjust themselves than if they had a less definite training. But, most of all, the present industrial constitution of society is like every society which has ever existed, full of inequities. It is the aim of progressive education to take part in correcting unfair privilege and unfair deprivation, not to perpetuate them. Wherever social control means subordination of individual activities to class authority, there is danger that industrial education will be dominated by acceptance of the status quo. Differences of economic opportunity then dictate what the future callings of individuals are to be. We have an unconscious revival of the defect of the Platonic scheme without its enlightened method of selection.
Dewey, John, Democracy and Education, p. 219
As mentioned above, this model has several limitations. First, it's constructed upon multitudes of inequities, unsolicited advantages, and unqualified privileges. Second, it is inherently protective of the status quo of the industrial society's constitution. Third, it is too specific to be adjustable to the dynamic social scene of modern life. Therefore, trainees will be kept high and dry amidst the shifting sands of modern life. The current consensus of many private education institutions and the sidelining of liberal arts and the opprobrium they hold against public engagement will jeopardize social integrity.
Pedram
11/10/2025
