NEW YORK - After telling an audience that young people today “think work is a four-letter word,” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said she apologized to her daughter.
“I said, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to convey the impression that you don’t work hard,”’ Clinton said Sunday in a commencement address at Long Island University. “I just want to set the bar high, because we are in a competition for the future.”
Clinton spoke to more than 2,000 graduates days after she criticized young people at a gathering of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington. In those remarks, she said young people have a sense of entitlement after growing up in a “culture that has a premium on instant gratification.”
The senator said that her daughter, Chelsea, phoned to complain after learning about the comments. The 26-year-old was hired in 2003 by McKinsey & Co. as a consultant, reportedly for a six-figure salary. She received a master’s degree from Oxford University after graduating from Stanford University in 2001.
“She called and she said, ‘Mom, I do work hard and my friends work hard,”’ Clinton said Sunday.
But, I find that the comment is "skewed." We are in competition for the future... that is the part on which I agree, but telling our future leaders and innovators that they don't work hard is a self-fulfilling prophecy. More accurate, might be an educational system that fails to recognize the needs of the nation (yes, that is correct - not the world - but our nation). We have a need to assimilate our immigrants by insisting on a common language (and by that I mean an English education, Americanized as it is). We need an emphasis on science, technology and mathematics with some law and business thrown in.
We need to educate (or provide guidance to) those coming through the educational system with respect to what is a marketable education.... and what is marginal with respect to the job market. While a part of this effort needs to be in the K-12 grades, another part of this needs to be examined at the college through professional school level. These are not easy issues to address, especially since there is a vested interest in most universities to ever expand and fund departments that are mostly academic exercises! Sorry, I know that they contribute to society also, but we are in a competition with both developed and developing nations - and the valuation of the $ depends on our technological superiority.
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