Tea at Trianon: Skills Over Degree

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Skills Over Degree

From USA Today:

A college degree will no longer give Americans a leg up when seeking some jobs with the federal government. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday that will overhaul the government’s hiring practices so that a job applicant’s skills will be given priority over a college degree. Administration officials say the shift will allow the government to hire a more inclusive workforce based on skill instead of a person’s education level.

“This will ensure that we’re able to hire based on talent and expand our universe to qualified candidates and ensure a more equitable hiring process,” Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and senior advisor, told reporters on Friday. Ivanka Trump is co-chair of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, which was created in 2018 and tasked with recommending ways to improve job training. The president signed the order during the board’s meeting on Friday. “The federal government will no longer be narrowly focused on where you went to school, but the skills and talents that you bring to the job," Trump said. The federal government is the nation’s largest employer with 2.1 million civilian workers. (Read more.)

julygirl said...: "People consider themselves educated when they are credentialed and stamped with the approval of institutions of higher education that gave them three things; a smattering of historical information just sufficient to make the past seem depraved, a vocabulary of indignation about the failure of all previous historic actors, ant the belief that America's grossest injustice is the insufficient obeisance accorded to them." Recent quote from a George Wills Column...of which for once I agree.; July 1, 2020 at 4:47:00 PM EDT