“That’s right.”
“Then what’s the point of giving Johnny and Jennie skills that would enable them to do these jobs?”
“I guess if they graduate with the skills, then at least they’ll have them when their time comes.”
“Where did their older siblings and parents pick up these skills?”
“On the job, I guess.”
“You mean while bagging the groceries, sweeping up, pumping the gas, doing the filing, and flipping the burgers.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“And won’t your improved graduates pick up the same skills their older siblings and parents picked up by doing these jobs?”
“Yes.”
“Then what do they gain by learning them in advance, since they’ll be learning them on the job anyway?”
“I guess there’s no advantage any which way,” I said.
“Now let’s see if you can figure out why your schools turn out graduates with zero survival value.”
“Okay … To begin with, Mother Culture says it would be pointless to turn out graduates with a high survival value.”
“Why is that, Julie?”
“Because they don’t need it. Primitive people need it, sure, but not civilized people. It’d be a waste of time for people to learn how to survive on their own.”
Ishmael told me to continue.
“I guess if you were conducting this conversation, you’d ask what would happen if we turned out a class of new and improved students with a hundred-percent survival value.”
He nodded.
I sat there for a while working it through. “The first thing I thought of is that they’d go for jobs as wilderness guides or something. But that’s completely stupid. The point is, if they had a hundred-percent survival value, they wouldn’t need jobs at all.”
“Go on.”
“Locking up the food wouldn’t keep them in the prison. They’d be out. They’d be free!”
Ishmael nodded again. “Of course a few of them would still elect to stay behind—but that would be a matter of choice. I daresay a Donald Trump or a George Bush or a Steven Spielberg wouldn’t have any inclination to leave the Taker prison behind.”
“I’ll bet it would be more than a few. I’ll bet half would stay.”
“Go on. What would happen then?”
“Even if half stayed, the door would be open. People would come pouring out. A lot would stay in, but a lot would come out.”
“You mean that, for a lot of you, getting a job and working until retirement age doesn’t look like heaven.”
“It sure doesn’t,” I said.
“So now you know why your schools turn out graduates with no survival value.”
“That’s right, I do. Since they don’t have any survival value, they’re forced to enter the Taker economy. Even if they’d rather opt out of that economy, they can’t.”
“Once again, the essential point to note is that, for all your complaining, your schools are doing just what you actually want them to do, which is to produce workers who have no choice but to enter your economic system, presorted into various grades. High-school graduates are generally destined for blue-collar jobs. They may be as intelligent and talented as college graduates, but they haven’t demonstrated this by surviving a further four years of studies—studies that, for the most part, are no more useful in life than the studies of the previous twelve. Nonetheless, a college degree wins admittance to white-collar jobs that are generally off-limits to high-school graduates.