Girls and Boys
To get more knowledge
To get more knowledge
This comic and 2771: College Knowledge are plays on the popular school-yard taunt, "Girls go to college, to get more knowledge; boys go to Jupiter, to get more stupider," also commonly heard as "Boys go to Mars, to get more candy bars; girls go to Jupiter, to get more stupider." The words "boys" and "girls" may be interchanged, depending on the gender of the person chanting (or how intelligent they are, for that matter). The schoolyard taunt embodies the competitiveness and separation commonly seen between young boys and girls, and ideas about the superiority of one's gender.
It should be noted that, historically, most higher education was preferentially or exclusively reserved for men, but that changed rapidly over the course of the 20th century. By the late 1970s more women than men were enrolling in college, and that trend has only increased, to the point where women make up nearly 60% of undergraduate students in American colleges and universities. This is an issue of substantial concern, because it reflects national trends in men failing to achieve academically. This comic may be pointing out that this gendered competition, which is often inculcated from an early age, is counter-productive, because it focuses on one gender succeeding at the expense of the other. In truth, human achievement is maximized when both men and women are given opportunities to gain skills and succeed.
The comic subverts the original rhyme by having both girls (Megan) and boys (Cueball) go to college to gain knowledge, and then using that knowledge to go to Jupiter as part of a space program, working in cooperation with other men (another Cueball-like guy) and women (Ponytail).
Going "to Jupiter, to get more stupider" is ironic considering that human beings have not yet even gone to Mars, so to go to Jupiter would take a huge amount of knowledge, investment, and further development of current technology. Likewise, people in space programs going to Jupiter would have advanced degrees, a great deal of knowledge, and a motivation to seek out more knowledge. Space programs and going to Jupiter would require the cooperation of many different people, men and women included, and probably even different countries, rather than the divisive atmosphere of the schoolyard.
The title text points out that by going to Jupiter you would get more knowledge, which is generally the purpose of any space program; that is, the purpose is to advance science, and it wouldn't actually be dumb at all. Therefore, the task of going to Jupiter is absolutely dependent on going to college, cooperation, and getting more knowledge; entirely the opposite of what the schoolyard taunt suggests.