Talk it out: Unemployment is a choice, whether in Oakland or the forest

With hundreds finishing up summer classes in July, a pressing question presents itself: Should vagrant, jobless students become urban hobos or members of a hardened class of survivor wilderness men and women for the duration of the August recess? Two columnists debate.

Nick Stamatakis: Any way you cut it, Pitt is a city school. Its students are not trained to enter the wild and pick berries and whatnot. Instead, our gritty upbringing makes us far more apt to don PVC pipe spears and descend into the sewers for rat hunting. Because all we have learned at school is underwater basket weaving and feminist constructs in “The Simpsons,” we must earn our living on the streets.

Rosie McKinley: To characterize Pitt as solely an urban campus is to ignore that two of the largest inner-city parks in the nation are within running distance of the Cathedral. While we’re no rural Penn State, inside the boundaries of Schenley or Frick Parks, Pitt students can hone their wilderness skills. And spending an hour or two going Thoreau is en vogue on campus. Besides, having learned only basket weaving and ancient Greek history doesn’t disadvantage us any more in the wild than it does living on the street.

NS: If I may be so kind, when was the last time you saw a bear in Frick Park? I don’t know if you are aware, but Yellowstone Park is in the midst of one of its worst bear seasons ever. Bears are climbing into the cars and stealing pretzels and babies.

In a way, the way we treat potential bears in the outdoors has to be like the way we treat the bearish college graduate job market: hang up the phone, move back in with mom and dad, and work the same jobs you used to in high school. You say we are somehow ready for what’s out there. I say it is better to be safe in your city home than be mauled by a bear (job market or otherwise).

RM: I’d rather die providing a social benefit by feeding the wildlife of our National Parks than continue life as a useless college graduate, burdening my parents and the national economy. I choose independent struggle in the woods. After all, if a college wilderness woman fails in the forest, does the national economy feel it?

I admit that in many places of the world it is not uncommon for houses to be integrated across generations. In Cuba, where private residence ownership was illegal for over 50 years, living with your parents is part of the culture. But this isn’t Fidel’s country. It’s America.

Our greatest American narrative is of the frontiersman. Manifest in the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, the pioneers of the Oregon Trail and even Armstrong’s great leap on the moon, the American nation is the story of the pioneer. It is time for this generation to find its role in the great American progression. So we don’t know exactly what our part is going to be. Going home won’t make the discovery any easier.

NS: I’m not going to talk about how you would rather be bear food than live a safe life at home. Instead, I’m going to talk about the naivete of your comments.

We know nothing. Literally nothing. You might remember the report from last year based on the book “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa that 37 percent of college graduates gained no knowledge over the course of their four years. And rigor continues to decline across all levels of education.

So if you are in that lower third, you really have two options: Either live on your own in the wilderness and get attacked by bears or go back home, try to actually gain meaningful skills and education, and then start over again. The key is deciding if you are in the bottom 37 percent. And if you are not, then it’s finding a way to signal to employers you mean business.

RM: So 37 percent of college students gained no knowledge — but this isn’t an argument about the difficult-to-measure benefits of a college education. The heart of the argument is about remaining in the city as a hobo or moving to the wilderness.

If we have lived in an urban setting such as Oakland and learned nothing, then clearly we do have to make a drastic shift to a new environment where we might actually learn something. In nature, we are forced to learn. With your mom’s TV-dinner fish sticks, you’ll eat for a day, but learn to fish in the wild and you’ll eat for a lifetime.

If anything, we can learn the importance of changing your environment from the success of recent NBA champion LeBron James. Following season after season of defeat, James returned to his familiar home setting of northeastern Ohio. It wasn’t until he left that he found success. Similarly, we can return defeated to our respective homes and the same bleak job markets, or we can look for success in a much more wild location.

NS: I agree, it’s impossible to win in Cleveland.