Mushy Heads…..

Why There Are So Many Mushy Heads in Academia

During the quarantine, I like many, have taken on a host of DIY projects. Recently, a friend of mine commented that she was impressed by my ability to perform such tasks. I was a bit surprised. I’ve done all sorts of manual labor in my life, but I don’t consider myself especially skilled.

When I was 14 I drove pilings into the Rappahannock River as part of a marine construction crew. When I was 16 through college I worked in a sawmill. I have hung sheet rock, wired houses, dug footings, driven trucks and more. I grew up in nice surroundings, nevertheless, my old man made sure that his boys got their asses out of bed and worked. Frankly, I loved “busting it” in the hot Virginia sun, and being able to see the fruits of my labor at the end of the day.

George Orwell once said, “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.” I remember my first small group discussion gathering for a government class at the University of Virginia. I thought everybody was conservative, and was shocked at some of the uninformed liberalism expressed in class. None of these kids had ever had a real after school or summer job. Baby sitting for your next door neighbor or being a camp counselor is not a real job!

So here is my theory. In my view, there are lots of people who work with their hands, who are a hell of a lot smarter than Harvard professors. The reason is, they have had practical knowledge of the way the world works. If you come from a cushy background, and you have never “worked in a sawmill,” you have no practical knowledge to filter information. So when that kid goes to college and gets indoctrinated with mushy ideas, there is no internal mechanism in the kid’s brain that says “that can’t be right.”

I have gone to fancy colleges and graduate schools in the US and England, but the best education I ever received occurred in the summers and after school before I went to college. Recently, I was taking a walk along the James River. Suddenly, I smelled creosote, turned  and saw a pile of railroad ties. I wondered if I had trimmed and treated these 40 years ago? To me the smell of the creosote was as intoxicating as a beautiful woman’s perfume.