RunningMan's post on the fallacies of the WatchTower reasonings started me thinking on the GB's stand on higher education. I am impressed with the superb thinking ability of many who post here. Unclebruce, Stephanus, Victor_E, Gamaliel, blondie, Undisfellowshipped, and MacHislopp to name just a few. These people have exposed the GB's faulty reasonings with both clarity and wit.
So, in my own humble attempt to follow their lead, I looked up the lastest material I had on this subject. My thinking is that the leadership does not want the RF to be 'too on the ball'. In my 25 years on the inside I took a lot of abuse for continuing my secular education.
The 89 Awake 5/8, pgs.12-14 paint, what I think is, a fairly accurate picture of the J-dud master's stand on Higher Education. They promote the ministry over any additional schooling and assign value of all post remedial training with its usefulness to their mission. And they employ some of the very logic mentioned by RunningMan in this Awake article.
Example: Paragraph ten states; While statistics indicate that university graduates earn higher salaries and suffer less unenployment than high school graduates, the book Planning Your College Education reminds us that these staistics are mere averages. Only a minority of university graduates receive sky-high salaries: the rest are paid wages that are far more down to earth. (Italics mine.)
What did they actually say? What is sky-high, or down to earth? What does 'mere statistics' mean?
Paragraph eleven states; 1 out of 5 [university] graduates who entered the labor market between 1970 and 1984 took a job not usually requiring a degree... What they don't say is 4 out of 5 graduates did get jobs they would not have gotten without this education. And what does 'not usually' mean?
Paragraph fourteen states;"Students still have almost unlimited freedom in personal and social matters..."This is aimed at the parents, big time! Heaven forbid, you have to trust your child to think for themselves! The J-dud masters won't let the RF do that so why should their grown kids!
Paragraph fifteen gets to their real motive as it states;The pressure to maintain high grades has caused some Christian youths to neglect spiritual activies and thus become vulnerable to the onslaught of secular thinking promoted by unviersities... They don't want people to actually start thinking and 'see' the manipulation methods they employ. And they color their reasoning in the negative.
Well, what do they want from the RF? Worker bees! Smart enough to function but not smart enough to out grow the party line. Paragraph seventeen spells out the acceptable attitude and stand all good J-duds should have; But often there are apprenticeship programs, vocational or technical schools and short-term university courses that teach marketable skills with a minimum investment of time and money... They go on to talk about the 'short time left', this was published in 1989, that's fourteen years ago. Think of all the J-duds working for ten to twenty thousand dollars less each year since this came out. Think of their quality of life and personal satisfaction lost as a result of following this FDS! Think of their dulled mental abilities! I think I need an aspirin!... Thank you for your support! Maverick