WelcomeNational service for young persons and the waste of my humanity
People get all patriotic and goo-goo eyed over "National Service". My life was already wasted without any National Service.
I would be "pleased as punch" as the cliche goes to contribute to the country of my biological origin if they put me in a place where I could contribute my highest potentialities in an optimally nurturing environment, not just be a consumer of consumer products in peacetime and an MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) of Shakespeare's Falstaff's "food for powder" in time of war. I would also be very glad to serve in the military under the same conditions → but don't haircut me like the partisans in France in World War II shaved the heads of women who had sexual relations with Wehrmacht soldiers.
Treat me with appropriate dignity and I will be glad to do whatever I can to help you in a win-win situation where I am helped too. But not to do some kind of menial labor for anybody's God, for anybody's Country or even for anybody's Yale.
From each according to his abilities. To each according to his needs.
My needs were not met even without National Service. I need to sip expresso each morning from a high-fire stoneware cup made by as master potter or at worst Rosenthal Studio Line porcelain, not to Big Gulp Dunkin Donuts coffee from a Styrofoam; almond croissants from La petite Patisserie (Larchmont, New York), not DunceCap donuts.
Orchids have different needs than weeds, and they give back different things, too. Would all the "National Service" moonies really want to waste a year or more of Frank Lloyd Wright's life loading boxes onto a conveyor belt in an Amazon.com warehouse? Likely they would, because their highest aspiration in their less than fully lives is probably to metabolize in a MacMansion.
To be constructive for the nation, young persons' national service should employ each individual young person's unique abilities and skills to the max. I could have been a teacher in a junior college in Appalachia, or provided hospice care for dying emeritus university professors whose minds were still sharp but their bodies were "going" (I would have diapered them as well as having conversations about the meaning of living and dying with them, or just held their wise hands as their lives ended...)
As always, all you cannibals who just wanted to extract surplus value out of me and couldn't wait until I would die a natural death to eat me for your lunch:
Haarschnitt Arbeit macht frei.
Bursary students
Bursary students are students who get a remission of part of their tuition in excachge for labor time in service to the school. This means they have less time available for study. But in addition, their effective hourly pay rate is a pittance: they are cheap labor for the school. So they have to work many hours for little reimssion of tuition, instead pf a few hours for much remisison. I always felt sorry for them. I was fortunate that while my father was not wealthy he was able to pay my full tuition so I was not subjected to being a "bursary student".
The idea of bursary students is wrong-headed. Every person should contribute something to their social surround. And if the wealthiest also had to do their part, they might try to reduce the amount each has to chip in. Less is more (but people stereotypically seem often to want more).
Bhat do those students who do no have to waste part of their time in tuition reduction labor do? Often they waste the time in competitive athletics, which yields no value for anybody: no labor for the school and no study for the student. So if they had to do some labor for the school it would not reduce their study time if we just eiminated this potlatch.
 |
  |