Is the Goal of a Highly-Skilled Workforce Realistic?
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
You raise some really good points. But just don't ever propose a solution that requires the assumption that the general public actually thinks more than 4 years in advance!
So true. Which makes foresight and persistence very valuable traits indeed!
After reading some on the Mike Rowe Works website I've come to the conclusion that our current K-12 education system is failing to provide value for those not planning on continuing a formal education. There is a lot of work out there but less and less of America's youth wants to engage in any of the trades work that is increasingly being done by foreign laborers who are coming here to work in order that THEIR children won't have to do manual labor in the future.
This growing aversion to skilled hands on work is a real problem for a society that has equated manual labor with a kind of personal failing, just the term,"high skill" connotes a type of labor requiring vastly superior abilities. All labor not done by machines is skilled, the level of difficulty can be a determiner of compensation requirements but overall, skill denotes the acquisition of knowledge and an ability to reason, two things that employers say are in short supply.
For those who rail against the workers in lesser skilled employment as people lacking in motivation to "do better" in life there is little hope of them becoming part of a solution, instead, they feed the fires of employment discontent. Is it any wonder that so much of our youth think they are bound to be the next Steve Jobs, or the next "startup magnate," and failing that means a life of certain drudgery? We've become a society that is characterized by the notion of "High Tech or Bust", this has become our mantra for the youth to latch on to.
It's easy to blame the worker for his plight, not educated enough, not motivated enough, and always the lament about possessing lesser skills being a failing in and of itself. America has changed, and those things that used to make sense to us no longer seem sensible to the employer class. Training your own workers instead of pawning off the task to for-profit Lo-Tech schools, insisting upon a tax supported public education system to actually teach some hard skills, less globalism and more Americanism, more helpful and less self centered when faced with national scale problems, and lastly, less tolerant of a lopsided system of compensation.
There seems to be such hatred for anything that smacks of a collective, American's hate taxes, they hate their own government, they all too often hate each other, but they also hate to see the crumbling infrastructure of our roads, bridges, dams, sewers, water supply systems, and schools, they want government to "do something" but not be interfering in the process, they want the other guy to go to work, pay taxes, and "get off of welfare", but, they also support a system of education that renders up too many unemployable lost souls. And the worst paradox of all, the widespread notion that work has little monetary value unless it demands the utmost ability of a person.........
The only part of this I disagree with is the notion that our public schools are the root of the problem. The people get what they ask for. Any reasonably intelligent person can get what they need from a public school with perhaps a little supplementation on the side. I do not think the majority of the public see public school as a replacement for a trade school. And private schools certainly are not!
Who after all, looks at their newborn baby boy and exclaims, "He'll be a great factory worker (or plumber) some day!"
No, it is not reasonable. There's a reason why the IQ statistical distribution among the population is a bell curve, with the vast majority of people less intelligent than a respectable 120, which I consider to be an entry point for moderately skilled workers (good machinists, CNC operators, skilled repairmen, etc).
Regarding what the future holds, I have a few ideas. One is a return to the cities, because that's where the social services are. The next is the return of small businesses to suburbs and displacement of big-box stores (not replacement of, but displacement of). Small businesses can catch the wave of localism / "buy local" trend among the youth who reject globalism (and yet embrace it in an ironic fashion, but whatever). I also see a trend towards more menial jobs. One excellent example of this is Japan. I swear I've never seen so many people for customer service, like door greeters, bored looking technicians, train operators, etc. in my life.
The only part of this I disagree with is the notion that our public schools are the root of the problem. The people get what they ask for. Any reasonably intelligent person can get what they need from a public school with perhaps a little supplementation on the side. I do not think the majority of the public see public school as a replacement for a trade school. And private schools certainly are not!
Who after all, looks at their newborn baby boy and exclaims, "He'll be a great factory worker (or plumber) some day!"
Some have a differing view of what a public school education bestows upon those who graduate from high school when they aren't college bound. The reality for these people is that they aren't prepared to go forward, for the fact that they have been in an institution that largely favors the college prep notion. They haven't had the exposure to much else in high school. And this holds especially true for those inner city broken schools that have been the subject of much public debate. The tech sector and professional jobs are what's being paraded around in public schools as THE goal, those "other" jobs are readily acknowledged today as the consequence of not going to college and thus not worthy of much discussion.
On the birth of a child: I wasn't aware that any newborn child has a career path expectation other than to be the independent well adjusted adult who can be gainfully employed. Your statement in this regard is revealing of that sentiment that allows for a somewhat dimmer light to shine on those who fix our car, build our homes, our roads, our hospitals, AND our universities, that they'll never be attending.
The Plumber, welder, painter, is somehow just a little bit less on the social acceptance level than those who fix your computer, write the code for your computer, or any of the "hi tech" jobs that have been elevated in the public's mind to be worthy of their child's labor. This view IS the root of the problem and the public schools policies simply mirror that view. How would a Plumber or factory worker OR their parents respond to such statements without feeling a little defensive, the horror of horrors, that any of our children should end up in such jobs.
Work should be about the idea that all labor is necessary, and contrary to our BS notions of education we need to see that all work has a fair share of contributory value to it regardless of how much training was needed. College students are made to feel a bit superior to their blue collar counterpart and that is a huge part of the disrespect that comes from the notion that formal vs informal education automatically leaves the informally trained person at a disadvantage.
Last edited by jertheber; 08-08-2014 at 12:01 PM..
After reading some on the Mike Rowe Works website I've come to the conclusion that our current K-12 education system is failing to provide value for those not planning on continuing a formal education. There is a lot of work out there but less and less of America's youth wants to engage in any of the trades work that is increasingly being done by foreign laborers who are coming here to work in order that THEIR children won't have to do manual labor in the future.
This growing aversion to skilled hands on work is a real problem for a society that has equated manual labor with a kind of personal failing, just the term,"high skill" connotes a type of labor requiring vastly superior abilities. All labor not done by machines is skilled, the level of difficulty can be a determiner of compensation requirements but overall, skill denotes the acquisition of knowledge and an ability to reason, two things that employers say are in short supply.
For those who rail against the workers in lesser skilled employment as people lacking in motivation to "do better" in life there is little hope of them becoming part of a solution, instead, they feed the fires of employment discontent. Is it any wonder that so much of our youth think they are bound to be the next Steve Jobs, or the next "startup magnate," and failing that means a life of certain drudgery? We've become a society that is characterized by the notion of "High Tech or Bust", this has become our mantra for the youth to latch on to.
It's easy to blame the worker for his plight, not educated enough, not motivated enough, and always the lament about possessing lesser skills being a failing in and of itself. America has changed, and those things that used to make sense to us no longer seem sensible to the employer class. Training your own workers instead of pawning off the task to for-profit Lo-Tech schools, insisting upon a tax supported public education system to actually teach some hard skills, less globalism and more Americanism, more helpful and less self centered when faced with national scale problems, and lastly, less tolerant of a lopsided system of compensation.
There seems to be such hatred for anything that smacks of a collective, American's hate taxes, they hate their own government, they all too often hate each other, but they also hate to see the crumbling infrastructure of our roads, bridges, dams, sewers, water supply systems, and schools, they want government to "do something" but not be interfering in the process, they want the other guy to go to work, pay taxes, and "get off of welfare", but, they also support a system of education that renders up too many unemployable lost souls. And the worst paradox of all, the widespread notion that work has little monetary value unless it demands the utmost ability of a person.........
What you are describing is a direct result of our education system promoting the idea that everyone should go to college, everyone should do what they love, and everyone deserves to feel great. This is what the left advocates for. Of course no one loves to do manual skilled labor even if they can live a decent life with decent skills. Americans are just utterly entitled. Just when they are denying it, the employers are much smarter and have long concluded about what Americans have become. Do employers even believe it when someone says they are willing to work hard? Some employers have long given up.
Keeping dreaming about what you love to do. Poverty is the only result of that for the majority of the population. To many Americans, it's hard to not look at people with disgust. No skills, lots of entitlement, absorbed about how wonderful the self is, falsely believing in ones own attractiveness, expecting others to accord with ones own identity preferences, etc. the worse of all is that this people, the American people, do not even know that these are early symptoms of upcoming poverty.
The message that Americans need to hear is this: you are not as special as you think you are.
The people who think they are special, that they deserve high pay or they won't even make an effort, that they expect their partner to accord with what they prefer, professional and socially, are precisely the people who will be utterly abandoned. No one wants to put up with that. Go your own ways, prince or princess. Good night and good luck.
In most countries, you study and work in order to get the money to buy food, medicine, and shelter so that you can survive. That is how the world generally works. Most Americans are highly entitled to the point where they can't see it. Our education system also assumes a very entitlement position. It's as if we no longer need plumbers and manual labor. Students are pushed to go to college and get a nice job, but it's hard numbers that only a portion of these students can ever get these jobs. A society needs all kinds of people.
The US currently keeps a lot of its own citizens unemployed and subsidized by everyone else, and then employes foreign labor to fill the gaps that Americans take for granted. This is why so many young Americans end up working at baristas. I don't see them changing. They tell you they want something creative. They don't want to work for a big corporation. They hate cubicles. They dislike cold winters. They want a cool city. They can't live anywhere in Georgia except Atlanta or savannah.
Ok, people. If you can make that happen, then that's fine. If you haven't shown that you can get it, you are simply entitled. Many of these types possess little to no real trade skills, other than repeating cultural clinches they were fed in school. It's a complete lack of understanding of economics, not just our students but our educational institutions. They educate people for non existent careers. These students then go on to work at Starbucks, with student debt.
It's not just companies that should train people. It's educational institutions that desperately need to add training into their curriculum. Education has long become more and more a fantasy land for left wing politics and union job protection. Student interests and prospects are put on a back burner. Teaching is often detached from the real world, if not outright against the professional world where most students will find jobs. Finally, politics concerning what the world should do is weak in front of the real world.
I see lots of young people who have severe cultural barriers against the professional world. That is working against them in every way. It's the triumph of an ideology and the ruin of a generation.
The typical Millionaire is a plumber -- he may have 3 or 4 trucks with a half dozen employees. He lives in a lower middle class neighborhood in a very modest house, has never purchased a new car (only used), fixes things himself, has never owned a watch that cost more than $25, clips coupons from the newspaper and never buys anything that isn't on sale. The family never shops at Nordstroms let alone Saks or Bloomingdales; they shop at Marshall's and TJ Maxx and Stein Mart. If they splurge, it is to shop at Target. They do not have fancy new flat screen TVs because the old tube TVs are just fine. No trendy $200 Nike sneakers nor $500 jeans. The outlet mall sells jeans for $8. Costco has them for $12.
I'd be very happy to have a son who one day was a plumber.
Among the skills I had learned before and during my service in the US Navy was the ability to wash dishes and clean bathrooms. I was also an effective armed thug but that was unofficial. They never used my machine building and repair skills. After my return to the World in 1968 I moved to Connecticut, worked at a decent paying job in a machine shop, got married and started college. I worked summers as a machinist for a temp firm.
After I received my degree in Environmental Science I worked as a bureaucrat, small hydropower developer, and another stint as a bureaucrat. That amounted to 40 years of boredom, except for the hydro, but it resulted in a far better pension then I could have dreamed of as a machinist. I liked working metal and would probably had a great deal more satisfaction but a great deal less money and social status. I believe this is why kids are directed to college level studies and the resulting careers. Graduates simply make more money and have higher social status.
FWIW - Modern machine techniques are far more complicated then any time in the past. It practically takes a college education to build, repair and operated modern computer directed machine tools and assembly robots. I could be productive in a mid 20th century machine and fabrication shop but would be completely lost in a modern factory.
Costa,
I take issue with your recent post.
Most Americans WANT to work. And we work hard.
At whatever we do.
Doesn't matter. Build a bridge, fly a plane, drive a bus.
Don't come on this board stating that all Americans feel entitled
to money they don't earn. Because we don't. We all want to work.
I don't know what country you are from, but let you tell you this.
The American worker is the most productive worker in the world.
We may not be as cheap as 1 dollar an hour, but our goods and services
are bought from everyone who wants quality, not quantity.
I just had to say that. This is my country you are talking about.
American is the best at anything it puts its mind to.
THAT is why EVERYONE wants to come here.
That is why everyone buys our Treasury bonds, because we back
it up with our genius.
OK. I did my rant.
I'm a proud hardworking American.
The change started with NCLB and the push by the federal government to lead education policy and influence local control of curriculum. It set bad policy into motion with an idealistic and unrealistic goal that 100% of students would be proficient on a standardized test by 2014 or face dire consequences. Now Race to the Top takes it to a new level with major corporate interests heavily influencing policy and curriculum while standing to reap large shares of public $. The new model now requires students to self-fund their post-secondary training by finding an institution to acquire the skills needed to compete for the limited number of positions that require their skills.
Local BOEs and school administrations largely follow the script provided by the federal Department of Education and all cite the same contrived research, implement the same programs, and largely realize the same subpar results. A healthy variety of programs which include strong vocational opportunities need to be part of public education starting in middle school as exploratory opportunities. Many school systems wrongly eliminated programs vocational programs as well as useful life skills like home economics/cooking. Today we are realizing the vital importance of nutrition and the importance of a balanced diet to our personal well-being, longterm health, as well as the economic viability of our healthcare system. This needs to be an integral component of public education.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
