I had a Lab once who I named after Baby Doc Duvalier except his name was Baby Doc Duckvalier. He was born just after Baby Doc fled Haiti for exile. Good riddance to bad rubbish as my grandma would say.

Now Doc lived in a small town in WNC. However, he had darn good bloodlines. His grandfather was a Field Trial Champion and his Great-Grandfather was not only a Field Trial Champion but the National Amateur Field Trial Champion. Given the highly competitive nature of field trialing, being an FC-AFC or, even better, a NAFC-FC beats a degree from Harvard, Yale, or anywhere else in the Ivy League as it took incredible brains plus athleticism and is a good deal rarer.

That said, Doc, while a beautiful Lab, really couldn't retrieve nearly as well as your average, barely pedigreed, duck hunter's dog.

The moral of this story, Ms Marjorie, is that going to an Ivy League school (or just basking in the presence of one of their grads) doesn't make you a leader or any better than anyone else. I'll take the hockey mom who may have struggled in school over the high-flyer and rainbow rider any day. She'll get stuff done despite being denigrated by the likes of you.

So let me see if I understand.

Your Lab was taught how to to retrieve. Probably by very skilled instructors. And in theory, the combination of heritage and training should have made for a very good duck hunter's dog.

And yet, like GWB, despite pedigree and eduction, the dog wouldn't hunt.

But would you expect a dog with no real training be able to do a much better job of retreiving?

Yeah I didn't think so.

Just as I doubt you would consider yourself capable of keeping pace for even one loop of a NASCAR course even though you probably a are a pretty good driver.

No, I won't take the political equivilent of a street driver and consider them capable of driving safely, much less competitively in a NASCAR race.

Yet that is what you are suggesting we do by voting for Palin.

degsme, if College actually prepared you for real life I might agree with your metaphor, however the reality is college is worthless. Trade schools are much more practical when it comes to actually teaching a skill.

the Liberal arts core of all colleges ensure that 90% of it is a complete waste of time. I mean, would you put your dog in a school that taught it how to retrieve ducks, if that is what you wanted it to learn? or would you put it in a class, where the dog trainer taught it a variety of worthless tricks like sitting, playing dead, and speaking, and of course retrieving, but its not that good at retrieving because it only spent a few days on it. Oh, not to mention the trade school lets the dog learn in 2 weeks, the college takes 4 years to make the dog less efficient. I got a B.A., I know, its a complete waste of time, the only value of it, is it gets you into the old boys club. The Dog doesn't know dick about ducks, but the owner gets a pretty peice of paper that he can use to brag to his friends.

I'd argue the reverse. Trade Schools are almost useless. Technology is changing far too fast for trade schools to keep up. In the 5 years that I was involved with the design and development of engineering software, how you designed a new part and the mold for it went from an art and a trade, to something a HS kid with 6 weeks of training can do. Except that there are trade schools STILL TEACHING the "trade".

Similarly my undergrad degree is in Computer Science. The uni I went to was strong on theory with the idea that you would learn the "languages" on the job anyway. Well my theoretical background formed the basis of knowledge that allows me to understand the technology of today, even though the languages and networks have been through at least 6 "revolutions".

So I would hire a liberal arts student who can demonstrate they have learned how to reason critically over a trade school star who only reasons with "common sense" every time. EVERY TIME. And I have been involved in more than one succesful startup, run my own business as well as worked at the senior level in some very large companies.

Sorry, trade school is where you go if you either can't reason clearly or are lazy.

Exactly degsme, the fundamental difference between, those that don't believe in elitism and those that do. You believe that a broad education gives you a foundation that will make you superior to somebody that learned a specific skill. While, I would say experience is a 100 times more important than the education. I wont get into your reasoning argument, because frankly the idea that you can teach reason, or measure reason in the liberal arts program is absurd. Writing a paper, or learning basic skills is the anti-thesis of reasoning. I have to suspect you have never been to a trade school, because trade schools teach you the same basic aspects that the liberal arts core will, but it also expands on it. Make no mistake education has value, but as far as preparing you for actual work, it fails miserably.