Found another graduate student sobbing at my office door today. Said her parents had disowned her for wanting to get a PhD in English. They told her it's just not "practical," and even asked The Question—the one that every humanities major dreads most: "What are you going to do with that?" I told her that her education is an end in itself. Made her feel better.
I'm going to try to stay cool-headed here. But Stanley, you're going in the wrong direction. If you knew anything about my "critical pedagogy movement," you'd know that education is the designated apparatus for raising up the repressed, not for helping them understand that Lolita is the great novel of kitsch Americana motels.