In this episode, I sit down with Mike Rowe, host of Dirty Jobs and founder of the Work Ethic Foundation, to talk about the importance of a work ethic curriculum, AI, and what God has to do with all of this.
00:12:10.420I mean, our kids are young, but we're not so sure that's how we feel about college and higher education.
00:12:15.540And, in fact, we have some fears surrounding it, considering some of those acronyms that you just listed and the ideology that's being pushed at universities.
00:12:24.240I mean, it's just crazy to me how fast that change has happened over just a few generations.
00:12:30.460It's like the time thing we were talking about before.
00:12:34.560It's stretched out and it's compressed at the same time.
00:12:56.160What are some things I can say and do that are universally wise?
00:13:02.780And for a while there, it was go to college.
00:13:06.160Because, look, to be fair and to be honest about it, there was a time not so long ago when our country really did need to encourage more kids to affirmatively get into higher education.
00:13:26.920The problem is the same problem all of the time.
00:13:31.660We pushed too hard and too far, and we did it with this cookie-cutter approach, this idea that there is a training manual for parents and that somewhere near the top of it, that's very appealing.
00:13:48.600And so that trope found its way into the manual.
00:13:53.180So a whole generation of well-intended parents combined with a whole generation of well-intended guidance counselors told a couple generations of kids not just, hey, this is a path you should consider.
00:14:08.860We told them that if you don't take this path, you're doomed.
00:14:14.780And so when we started doing that, we turned trade schools and apprenticeships into something subordinate to a four-year degree, which by extension made a whole category of jobs vocational consolation prizes.
00:14:33.060And so all of that part of the workforce became the thing you don't want your kid to wind up doing because it's a reflection partly on their deficiency and partly on you, right?
00:14:52.480You don't have to look any further than Varsity Blues to see what parents will do, right?
00:14:58.480So, you know, it's important to acknowledge that all of that happened.
00:15:04.020And I think it's important, too, to say, look, is it really a mystery as to why college got so expensive when you think about that kind of pressure?
00:15:13.240And, I mean, the universities have free reign, essentially, to charge whatever they want because their customer base is scared to death.
00:15:21.080So they'll borrow whatever it takes, and they don't think of it like a car or a TV or something transactional.
00:15:30.800They think of it as an investment in their future.
00:15:34.280And then the next thing you know, it's college for all.
00:15:37.180And then the next thing you know, if you're opposed to that, you're way out of line.
00:17:05.520But I absolutely see the benefit in alternate routes that, as you said, they were not even presented to us in school at all.
00:17:16.340And if you chose, if you were one of the crazy people who chose to go to a community college or chose to not go to college, that was like, wow, did you hear about that person?
00:17:26.680That person decided not to go to college.
00:17:28.160And it was this insane, stigmatized choice.
00:17:32.980Well, that started, I mean, for me, my guidance counselor literally looked me in the face when he suggested that, what's it, Pennsylvania, UPenn, James Madison, and the University of Maryland.
00:18:44.000On the left was a picture of a kid in a cap and gown, mortarboard, who had just graduated, holding his diploma, smiling, looking optimistic.
00:18:51.280And next to him is a tradesman in a dark, dingy, dirty environment, holding a wrench, looking down, right?
00:19:45.460I saw the other day on a talk show, Stephen Colbert, this guy from the WEF, and his name is escaping me right now.
00:19:55.740But he's, you know, part of the World Economic Forum.
00:19:58.600And he said, for the first time ever, parents don't know what to teach their children because we cannot predict what's going to happen in 20 years.
00:20:08.520He was talking about throughout the generations, you'd still be able to lay a foundation and know that those things are relevant, which I'm not really sure is true, thinking about the Industrial Revolution.
00:20:31.020And parents, really, there's no need to even teach your kids essential skills because we don't know if those skills are going to be applicable.
00:21:25.700Like, identify the things in your life that bring you the most joy and the most fulfillment and the most nourishment and ask what their actual application is.
00:21:35.120It's a, you can't let him set the table that way.
00:21:40.480Otherwise, you'll wind up answering the question the way he wants you to answer it.
00:21:47.620You know, it's not a very good question, in other words.
00:21:51.540And it's based on what I think is a faulty premise.
00:21:55.320Your work can't be reduced to the pay.
00:22:00.660The pay is very important, obviously, because we don't work simply to fulfill ourselves, but we also don't work simply to make money.
00:22:09.720So, somewhere in that transaction is the humanity that you mentioned.
00:22:19.020And in that humanity is the individuality.
00:22:22.360And in the individuality is the great experience of life and the unpredictability and the variance.
00:22:30.900This idea that he doesn't know what's going to happen in 20 years is probably true, but why is it bad?
00:22:52.200You know, I think about that a lot, you know, in terms of certainty and uncertainty and, you know, our need for it.
00:22:59.520Like, we all need to feel secure enough that we can function.
00:23:05.120In other words, we need to know the sun is going to come up.
00:23:08.460But if it came up the same way every day for 20 years, if the sunrise always looked the same, and if the sunset always looked the same, we'd go out of our minds.
00:23:20.760Because uncertainty is variety, right?
00:23:23.800So, yeah, I don't know what to think of people who look at their crystal ball and go, okay, it's impossible to predict what's going to happen.
00:23:32.920Therefore, we should stop doing all these things or start doing all these new things.
00:24:17.880When you think about the past 100 years and how much has changed and how little you could predict going from, you know, 1930 to 1940, from 1960 to 1970, whatever it is, or let's say 20 years.
00:24:31.860Certainly from 1960 to 1980, you couldn't have predicted a bunch of the things that developed.
00:24:36.420Even going back further than that, I'm sure that there were a lot of people who couldn't have predicted the printing press.
00:24:40.960And I also think about how there are skills that maybe are less needed today than they were 20 years ago, but that doesn't mean that those skills aren't valuable.
00:24:56.360Say today that it's less important for you to be a good writer or a good speaker because everything has predictive text and you can kind of just use a template.
00:25:06.320But still, being a good communicator and a good writer can make you stand out.
00:25:12.080It's actually, I think, because it is so, I don't know, it's not as in demand, seemingly, that it can actually be more valuable.
00:25:22.020It can make you, it can give you access to different parts of the world and different people than you would be able to otherwise because so few people can speak well and write well and communicate well and relate well to other people.
00:25:34.920So just because something isn't as needed as it was 20 years ago, doesn't mean that it doesn't have value and that we shouldn't teach it.
00:25:50.240A lot of people look at that and go, it's just not relevant to me, so we shouldn't teach it.
00:25:54.360And you can go, again, if you ask that question, if you say, where is the value?
00:26:01.960Look, it's an interesting argument for me to make because it's ultimately going to bring me back to defending the very liberal arts degrees, which I think are so egregiously overpriced right now.
00:26:12.500Um, but it, it's important, you know, it's important to know things that you don't use.
00:26:20.340It's important to master things that have no practical application in your life.
00:26:25.540It's, it's not enough to simply do that.
00:26:28.520Then you become the art history major who's on the dole.
00:26:31.840Then you become the poli sci major who's asking if you want fries with that and so forth.
00:26:37.320Um, so your life has to be a balance, but yeah, I, I would really suggest that the people most responsible for developing AI are probably very good communicators.
00:26:53.100They probably experienced all the things that allowed them to craft this incredible tool.
00:26:58.360Now, the people who will come to rely on this tool exclusively and to the detriment of their own growth, well, they're just going to be the batteries in the matrix there.
00:27:13.340They will, to this guy's point, be, they'll, they'll shed their humanity and, and they'll be the stars in their own versions of idiocracy.
00:27:26.040Right. And they won't be able to write or think for themselves and they, and they won't be able to quote a sonnet and they won't be able to reflect on the strange compression and extension of time after a lockdown.
00:27:38.520And they might just think that two plus two equals five if the computer says so.
00:27:51.400So look, if we have to go through all of that silliness only to come out on the other side and realize back to delayed gratification that, that anything worth knowing takes time, anything worth, worth feeling takes time.
00:28:07.840So these, uh, my granddad used to say shortcuts lead to long delays.
00:28:15.340I, I think that, I think I, I see that now everywhere I look.
00:28:21.220And so if AI is here, AI is coming, there's no doubt about it.
00:28:29.140The question is, are we going to see it and use it as a tool or are, are we going to embrace it as a, as a crutch?
00:28:37.860Are, are you worried about the future of work as it relates to the dominance of AI?
00:28:59.040Yeah, I'm not, I'm not totally freaked out about it because I don't have a crystal ball either.
00:29:05.560And I think 20 years from now, I don't think the species is going to, to just shed the humanity the way this guy's talking about.
00:29:14.840Right. It's Yuval Harari, by the way. That's his name. Big W.E.F. guy.
00:29:33.580You know, I, I, I, I can't compete with his curriculum via Tay, uh, but you know, I just wonder how many people have outsmarted themselves.
00:29:47.420I, I, I don't know. I, I believe that we're, we're only what? 2,100 generations old as a species.
00:29:57.420We haven't been here a long time. Uh, it seems like every new generation though, like we said, thinks that this is it. This is it. We've, we've never seen times like this, but every one of those 2,100 generations have said the same thing.
00:30:12.160Because at some point they were at the absolute height of human understanding, but what have we done? I mean, what have we done with this incredible understanding?
00:30:25.680Like the greatest medical minds in the world thought it best to drain the blood out of George Washington when he was suffering at the end of his life to fix him.
00:31:13.160And so, yeah, the thing I, the thing I think about and worry about and, and, and look for is who sounds the most certain.
00:31:24.800And I used to, I used to be comforted by certain sounding people.
00:31:30.360And now I have to admit, I'm, I'm more skeptical of them because it seems like we've had a front row seat in the last three or four years of this weird compressed time.
00:32:32.460And it's filled with scientists and physicists and mathematicians because thanks to Hubble and some other telescopes, the amount of information coming back to us is so breathtaking.
00:32:44.880And it's so mind bending that I often find myself in the booth with a new script in front of me.
00:32:53.980And the producer from, from the UK will be like, um, yes, we have to go back and redo a couple of things from, um, two months ago.