Ph.D. Problems

The fol­low­ing let­ter was printed in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle this past Wednesday. I think it’s funny as hell, given the errors in fact present in it, but it also lacks almost any sem­blance of logic. It is reprinted here with­out per­mis­sion of the Chronicle, so if they have a prob­lem, they need to con­tact me. The let­ter was writ­ten (as is) by Jack Clarkson of West Yellowstone, Mont.:

Although I was not a his­tory major while in high school, I can reflect back upon our American his­tory. Turns out, there were no Ph.D.s on the trio of ships that sailed to the Americas to estab­lish our first colonies. I could not find any Ph.D.s that signed the Declaration of Independence. We have never in our his­tory had a Ph.D. for president.

The West was set­tled and pop­u­lated by ordi­nary men and women, no Ph.D.s there. None of our astro­nauts have been Ph.D.s, Wall Street is not pop­u­lated by Ph.D.s either. We have been in two world wars, the Spanish American War, the police action in Korea, the Vietnam War, Desert Storm and now the War on Terror which is cur­rently tak­ing place in Afghanistan and Iraq. I read the papers, and watch the news, I do not hear of any Ph.D.s who are fight­ing for our coun­try in those the­aters. Outside of the med­ical field, I do not recall any really famous Ph.D.s or any Ph.D.s who have made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to our society.

To tout the doc­tor­ate as some kind of man­tel that is bestowed upon the most learned and the most saga­cious mem­bers of our soci­ety, and that their con­tri­bu­tion is some­how more sig­nif­i­cant than those with less for­mal edu­ca­tion is an error made by those who would teach us that edu­ca­tion is an end unto itself.

The old adage is: Those who can “do,” those who can’t “teach.” It sure rings true if you look at the his­tory of our country.

Now, I’m not usu­ally one to nit­pick oth­ers, and I’m not about to start with Mr. Clarkson. However, I think he needs to get his facts straight and learn the basics of a solid argu­ment (ver­sus an all-out anti-academic rant) before he deigns to share his opin­ion with the pub­lic again. Responses?

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