First Question in 2nd US Presidential debate: Student asks about employment after graduation!

Yesterday I saw the 2nd US Presidential debate held on October 16th, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEpCrcMF5Ps. Its transcript is available here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/us/politics/transcript-of-the-second-presidential-debate-in-hempstead-ny.html?pagewanted=all.

The first question was by a young undergraduate student, "Mr. President, Governor Romney, as a 20-year-old college student, all I hear from professors, neighbors and others is that when I graduate, I will have little chance to get employment. Can — what can you say to reassure me, but more importantly my parents, that I will be able to sufficiently support myself after I graduate?" (Source: above transcript link from nytimes.com)

The transcript link also has the moderator saying that the questions were *not* known (prior to the debate) to the candidates and the commission (presidential debate commission, I guess) but known to the moderator and her team.

I think it is a celebration of US democracy that a young undergraduate student is able to pose such a real-life-concern question directly to the sitting President and his challenger. Hats off to US democracy!

The answers from the candidates were, well, politically correct :). But I am not sure whether they really were good answers. In my humble opinion, the challenges of today's tough economic times not only for the developed countries of the world but perhaps the whole world, must make educators/academics seriously examine whether the education they impart to students makes them job worthy. I think job-oriented education is the pressing need of the hour, worldwide.

A graduate who has been taught knowledge which cannot fetch him/her a job in today's economy undergoes huge suffering. The student's seriousness when he asks the question and how he clarifies that it is more important that his parents be reassured than him on whether he will be able to sufficiently support himself after graduation, says it all, IMHO.

Truth Telling - A Tough Job

Trying to be a truth-teller in today's world is a tough job. It is an unpopular affair.

I recently saw a few videos and read articles about how the great physicist Feynman faced the same challenges when he investigated the Challenger disaster. It was an eye-opener to me that even such a world-famous physicist had to face significant resistance from powerful administrators. If you have not seen it I recommend you see this 4 min 42 sec. video, Richard Feynman - Space Shuttle Challenger Investigation, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCLgRyKvfp0. The official view now seems that Feynman did catch the real problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman#Challenger_disaster.

The wiki page above states, 'He concluded that the space shuttle reliability estimate by NASA management was fantastically unrealistic, and he was particularly angered that NASA used these figures to recruit Christa McAuliffe into the Teacher-in-Space program. He warned in his appendix to the commission's report (which was included only after he threatened not to sign the report), "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."'

My respect for the great physicist Richard Feynman went up enormously after I recently came to know of the above human goodness side and the sheer *guts* to speak out the truth in the face of powerful opposition side of him.

So, I guess, it is always a challenge to be a truth-teller - material truth-teller - and far more challenging perhaps to be a spiritual truth-teller (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansur_Al-Hallaj). The saying goes: Sathyam Bhruyath Priyam Bhruyath Na Bhruyath Sathyam Apriyam. [English translation: Speak the truth; speak the pleasant truth; don't speak the unpleasant truth.]

Perhaps the safe path is to just put out one's views on the Internet and provide opinions only if people ask - a low-key activism and not a pushy activism.