I think your reading is not just uncharitable, but wrong.
> In other words, "the work I want to do is real but the work you want to do is trivial and pointless."
No, "the work you want me to do is trivial and pointless". And the context is college, and even more so high school. It's not a news flash that the work they want you to do in school isn't "real". It's exercises designed to teach you, not actual work that needs done.
> Similarly, while many English lit majors may end up contributing little most of us find valuable in that field, there are some who will become authors who genuinely help other humans find more meaning in life and feel less alone, and others who will shed new light on history and thiis contribute to the understanding of our present.
Given that Wodehouse was one of PG's positive examples, this also seems to me to be missing the point of the essay.
>No, "the work you want me to do is trivial and pointless". And the context is college, and even more so high school.
You choose your college and you choose your major, and you choose to go to college in the first place, so I'm not clear what you are referring to here. What entire college department exists to somehow force people to study its subjects? If someone's university is assigning work they don't work to do, they can transfer elsewhere. (They tend not to, because the educational institutions for adults that are strictly focused on a single topic lack prestige. Even a relatively technical "good" school like MIT will try to round out the academic experience of its students.)
> In other words, "the work I want to do is real but the work you want to do is trivial and pointless."
No, "the work you want me to do is trivial and pointless". And the context is college, and even more so high school. It's not a news flash that the work they want you to do in school isn't "real". It's exercises designed to teach you, not actual work that needs done.
> Similarly, while many English lit majors may end up contributing little most of us find valuable in that field, there are some who will become authors who genuinely help other humans find more meaning in life and feel less alone, and others who will shed new light on history and thiis contribute to the understanding of our present.
Given that Wodehouse was one of PG's positive examples, this also seems to me to be missing the point of the essay.