In search of life's "permanent things": to read and write clearly, to calculate and to engage in critical thinking.

• Author: Nichols, Russell
• Position: Education - Liberal arts education

This past spring I, like most of you, had occasion to celebrate the high school or college graduation of family and friends. During the commencement ceremonies, especially the high school variety, a theme emerged stronger than in any past year of my recollection. That theme was, "Seniors, you are not prepared for a lifelong career."

One high school principal told his seniors that they can expect job skills to become obsolete every five years. He said few, if any, of the 200 seniors before him that day would work for the same company for a lifetime, as had many of their parents. He told them to be flexible, to be ready for changes in job skills, even in total career direction. I think he is right.

What he did not say, and what worries some of us, is that many high school graduates are not rooted in the permanent, transferable skills to make successful and satisfying career adjustments.

Indeed, it may be that schools have not decided--or accepted--which enduring abilities are worthy of passing to the next generation. Or if teachers or parents have decided, our public schools may be too busy coping with social and behavioral pressures to get to the business of lifetime learning skills.

But I am encouraged, perhaps because both behavior and academic proficiency have sunk so low in some schools that everyone has heard the wake-up call.

Moreover, we as a working society are now a few years into the custom of career change so that we see countless living examples of job switches, career changes, and even diametric turns in the total activities of people in middle age. That evidence of skills and values, if monitored by school people, will guide better training for the next generations.

Liberal arts colleges have specialized in this preparation for decades. Now universities and even high schools are taking heed of their role not only to train for immediate citizenship, but also to educate for future relearning.

Fifty years ago, T.S. Eliot...