Please bear with me, I'm not quite sure how to reply correctly - if I do it incorrectly, please let me know how to do it right:) I'm replying to Will's diatribe on education on Monday. It sounds to me like a severe case of Professorial disillusionment speaking, not some critical look at why we choose to teach or even what happens when we finally reach that goal. The reasons people have for getting an education have changed incredibly over the last thirty years. The idealism and bright eyed youthfulness of the baby boomers in the 1960's turned into their eventual sell out in the 1980's. These 40 something people look back at the past 30 years with some kind of sick yearning for what they perceive as the last great period of time in Western Civilization. When the people who got an education did it for all of the right reasons - to become wise and knowledgable, of course never thinking that those same degrees in English Literature and Humanities would get them swishy jobs in Reagan's corporate utopia in the 80's. And even the ones that managed to stick to their ideals and use their education as a means to "do good" sit in their offices high up in the ivory tower of the academe and bemoan what their own selfishness and self serving attitudes have done to the generation they now have to deal with in the hallways and classrooms of their educational facilities. You made the bed - your generation raised us on pop culture and quick fixes, divorces and second and third and fourth step parents and half siblings - geez, some half baked Marxist might look back at the past couple of decades and make a quick guess why students react and act in the ways that they do today - distrust, no sense of security, disillusionment at 18 instead of 45. I'm sick to death of hearing mid-life ramblings by these people who can't reconcile their dreams with their realities. No one under the age of 33 that I know goes into the profession of teaching for ridiculous self serving notions like "oh my students are going to hang on my every word - I am so intelligent - my intellectuality will have them bowing at my feet" nor do the young professors I know have any notions about the motivating factors behind why most students get an education - you only had to experience the 80's to figure that out - money good, no money bad. A simple trip through time without your rose colored glasses might serve you well, Will. Melissa