What will we do with our dummies?

This commentator argues that colleges obsess over attracting the best and the brightest.  His book asks, "Are you smart enough?"  His argument: "When the entire system of higher education gives favored status to the smartest students, even average students are denied equal opportunities," he writes. "If colleges were instead to be judged on what they added to each student’s talents and capacities, then applicants at every level of academic preparation might be equally valued."

This leads me to ask, what will we do with our dummies?  The "No Child Left Behind" law has offered one solution: we simply declare that no one is dumb.  Mainstream everyone into our public school classrooms and somehow they all will get dragged along.  (Or could it be the bright kids get dragged down.  Well, no, they go to private and charter schools.)

Back in those halcyon days when Americans still manufactured stuff, an average Joe or Jane could work on an assembly line, belong to a good union, earn a living wage with decent benefits, and hope to retire on a comfortable pension.  Thanks to globalization, assisted by NAFTA and other free-trade agreements, and a willingness of multi-national corporations to exploit cheap labor wherever it can be found, these Joe and Jane Lunchbuckets now struggle to make ends meet in low-wage, lousy benefits retail and other service jobs.

Even college grads are winding up all too often in these kinds of jobs, while living in Dad's basement.

Meanwhile, machines continue to take on more and more tasks once requiring human beings.  Automation eliminates more jobs than it creates.  So said an MIT prof in 2013.  That prof wasn't wrong.

Are we moving to a Player Piano world?  If so, it won't be just our dummies who will be human surplusage.  Even average folks may find themselves superfluous flotsam and jetsam.  That prospect bodes ill for democracy and human rights.