Every time I see a young person acting like an uneducated knave, I look to the parents and see them acting similarly or just not caring how their offspring behave.
Whatever happened to simple manners?
I think that, when someone acts like that as a teenager, people just tend to attribute it to the fact that they're young. Then, they go from that to the idea that young people "these days" are all entitled because they don't work, or because they're given everything, or because they grew up in a "me" culture, or because...you get the point. In reality, though, almost everyone who I met like that when I was younger (and everyone who I've met like that recently, for that matter) has been a scaled-down mirror image of their parents. The one exception I knew was a guy who would alternately try to cut people down, and then break down crying because he though that no one appreciated his genius and leadership abilities. To anyone who knew him, it was obvious that he was suffering from some deep depression.
Agreed. The first job of a young person is to LEARN.
Heck, when I retire, I plan on going back to school so I don't loose the habit of learning.
I put a high value on education for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, it has utility. Even the dreaded degree in "Asian bisexual studies" is better than having no degree at all. Sure, a degree like that won't make you rich and your family might be disappointed in you if they're higher income, but even a college degree in something like sociology, the liberal arts, or (the closest real proxy to the ABS degree) women's and gender studies pays off with an average starting salary of between $25,000 and $35,000 a year.
That sort of pay isn't very high, but it's significantly above the poverty line and allows for a high quality of life if the person's chief goal isn't a high income. Contrary to popular belief, people who major in something like W & G studies aren't idiots. They know that they aren't going to make as much money as they would if they had majored in business or engineering, but they choose to study something that they find satisfying. Theology students also get paid in the same range and generally know that their pay is going to be limited by their course of study, but I very rarely hear anyone complaining that
their degrees are worthless. Some people who major in programs like this also use them as a platform to go to graduate school (often for law).
At the core of the matter, though, is the fact that I honestly view education as pretty much the best available bastion against totalitarianism in general and Bonapartism in particular. An educated populace is more likely to reject dogmatic authoritarian ideologies, and to evaluate political positions in a logical way rather than based on emotional appeals.