Don't pit education against labor
September 2014 | Raleigh News & Observer
Duane Long’s Sept. 3 letter “Fewer lawyers, more laborers = better for all” left me a bit confused. Long is rightly proud of his hard work in creating Longistics trucking and growing the company in a tough economy.
Longistics employs scores of drivers, warehouse workers and maintenance technicians, without whom Long’s success wouldn’t be possible. It also relies on accountants, lawyers and human resources managers, all of whom put in a full and honest day’s work. Which makes Long’s potshot at higher education exceedingly strange.
Long’s son, the Rev. W. Brooks Long, earned a bachelor’s degree from N.C. State, a master’s degree from Wake Forest’s divinity school and a second master’s from Johns Hopkins. I know all of that because Duane Long includes it in his own biography, noting his paternal pride.
Education is not the antonym of labor. To pit one against the other, as Long does, creates what an “elite thinker” might call a false dichotomy. It could more plainly be called nonsense.
College graduates don’t have a monopoly on thinking, and nongraduates don’t have a monopoly on hard work. Let’s stop the name-calling and focus on creating an economy and a society that works for all North Carolinians.
Eric Johnson
Chapel Hill.