In my previous post I talked about our generation and general feelings/attitudes towards sex/virginity/sexual images. I am sure some people could read this and be like, “Well what she said can apply to all generations. Women have always been seen as sexual objects. Not just now.” I am not sure if anyone saw the one paragraph I wrote about media images depicting women. Anyway, yeah, whoever says that and thinks that is right; women have always been seen as sexual objects now and in the past. However, the way women are perceived in culture does change. I talked about the pimp/ho ( but I also didn’t mention druck party chick either, but I think that is an image ), but in the 1950s a woman might have been dressed pretty and in the kitchen. Even if she was dressed sexily it was not scantily clad. What I was discussing is the images that we are shown and how they become more “liberal.”
Now I’m going to talk about other issues facing our generation.
My topic today is education.
Does it seem like everyone goes to college? Prior to the Pluto in Libra people, you did not really need to go to college to get a good job. You could graduate college, get a job in retail or a factory, and work your way up. If you stay long enough, you could get in management positions and make good money. More than likely, you were in a union too. ( I am not saying there aren’t any bad things about unions, like being forced to join one when you’d rather not, but unions do good things for workers most of the time )
Now it seems like everyone is at college in some form. ( There is also a rise of these for profit institutions. You’ve probably seen them in between Jerry Springer re-runs. These are places like DeVry, Remington, Sandford-Brown, Brown-Mackie, etc etc. These places target low income people and give them loans, but they do not give them what they really need… a Pell Grant, which regular colleges do give ). I’m in college. I am in my 4th year and still have some ways to go, although I am nearly done. I have 27 credit hours to go.
As we all know, it ain’t cheap. Many of us are in some kind of debt, whether it’s a little debt or a lot of debt, because we want to get an education, so we can all get good jobs. That’s what it is. Very few people go to college for the sheer love of learning. It’s far to expensive for that. People go to get good jobs and you are not guanteed a job if you go. You just have more opportunities.
I like academia. My only complaint is that it costs too much and there isn’t enough grants to give to qualified, intelligent low income people. But I also think middle class people shouldn’t have to get themselves 25,000 dollars in debt to go to school. Often, it can take 20 years to pay off your student debt.
Some people do not think low income people should go to college. I say if you have good grades, have a desire to learn and better yourself, go! But make sure you go into something you can get a job in. Its extremely competitive. And honestly most low income people don’t go to college because they were not raised to believe in education. And the ones that do go… they go to for profit colleges, like the ones I listed earlier.
Pell grants used to cover most expenses for low income people entering a public university. Middle class people only had a small amount of student debt, if any at all. Poor people who are qualified and intelligent are stuck going to community colleges, or getting themselves into enormous debt like middle class people. If you’re in the upper middle class, you’re lucky enough to have a small amount of debt, because perhaps your parents can pay for some of your education.
The problem for poor people isn’t necessarily Pell Grants. It’s the raising cost of tuition and the extreme cuts of state aid. In Ohio, you used to get an extra 2000 dollars if you were poor but that has been slashed. And the word “Slashed” is a good word to use. We are now in Pluto in Capricorn; now, we will see the corruption of big business, government officials and the rich ( not all rich people, just some of the 1% ). These people have always been corrupt. Pluto in Capricorn will just bring all of this to light and make the general public aware of this fact.
A conflict theory sociology person might say the upper classes want the poor out of education, thus making it harder for them to make it. And most people growing up in poverty just want to make it to the middle class, just be like everyone else! A conflict theory person will say that the super rich need there to be a “super poor.” If you’re super poor in the USA, you’re probably on SSI with a few kids, Food Stamps, no car, and you probably wear sweat pants and t-shirts all the time since you can’t afford anything else. Obviously the poor here don’t have it as bad as in Sudan, just to name one country. At least if they feel resilient they can go to community college and do something, although it won’t be as great as going to a university.
Okay, I’m not going into my discussion about being poor and being rich. That has nothing to do with astrology. Really, this doesn’t have to do with astrology, but it does pertain to the Pluto in Scorpio generation.
If you keep the poor from succeeding, then it’s easier for you to get richer. And keeping the poor from succeeding means keeping them out of academia. And at the same time slashing the middle class and making these people get into even more debt as if they aren’t in enough debt already. This is keeping the middle class as “Indentured Servants.” They have so much debt and so much to worry about, they can’t bother with abstract thought and actually do something ( like start something like OWS or Tea Party ). This is to keep them unaware, while at the same time kicking more people out of the middle class so the poor people pool gets larger and larger.
Anyway, aside from higher education, even secondary and primary education has seen slashes. At my high school, when I was in high school, our funds for the high school were cut ( Pluto in Scorpio kids ) so we could have high end tech for new elementary schools ( Pluto in Sag kids ). Our high school could not pass a levy for years. No one wanted to pay a little more taxes to help the kids out. I’m not in high school anymore, but from what I know from the kids now is that extracurricular activities are soo expensive. It used to be 75 to be in multiple activities when I went ( prior to 2008 ) but now it can cost up to 1000 dollars to be in multiple. That might just be a thing of the times with it being Pluto in Capricorn. Educational funds from government are being slashed, especially in Ohio. The governor of Ohio is not very popular. I don’t think he will be re-elected.
Standardized tests became more and more prevalent for our generation as we got older. It might be worse for the Pluto in Sag kids, because all their learning is centered around a dumb test. That’s where all the funding is going to. It might be used to force kids what legislators want them to learn. It keeps these kids ( Pluto in Sag in high school and middle school ) from abstract thought, free-thinking and creativity. It keeps them in a dumb little box where they won’t question anything.
So I do see some of these issues playing out with the younger Pluto in Sag generation. Like I said before, our issues become their issues, but in different ways.
Secondary education seems worse now than when I went. It was still rigid and creativity killing then too, but it seems like it is getting worse. Teachers should be able to teach what they want to teach.
/endrant.
Part 3 is the final one and will be about work/careers/politics.
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