The Decaying Evolution of Education...

[LizzieMaine]

Nah, it's just that I can't get home delivery of the paper anymore and need to read something disposable while I'm eating my sausage.

 

[Bolero]

The resources for knowledge are free and plentiful for those who want to learn outside of an institution.

I totally agree with these statements However one needs to be mindful that in order to obtain a Job that pays beyond Poverty Standards, 20K Yr, a College/University Degree is absolutely necessary unless Family connected....
Back in the Day...when I graduated HS it was really easy to Plot the Future, it was "On to College" or "Automotive Apprenticeship" or "Military"....
Nowadays...????????????

 

[JimWagner]

You don't need a college degree to work in the trades, or most other jobs that get your hands dirty. Electricians and plumbers make good money. But the educational system has tried mightily over the past 30-40 years to convince kids that they are too good to work in those jobs and that those jobs are beneath them.

I had an interesting conversation with one of the carpenters building my garage 3 years ago. He was quite skilled, enjoyed his work and glad to have it. What he wasn't so thrilled with was still paying off his student loans for his masters in midieval English.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's a real problem with parents, too, above and beyond the educational system. Talk to the typical middle-class parent today and ask them if they think their kid should become an electrician and they'll throw their hands up in horror and declare CERTAINLY NOT, MY KID IS GETTING A DEGREE AND WILL THEN MAYBE TAKE A YEAR OFF TO TRAVEL BEFORE GOING ON TO GRAD SCHOOL!

I've said it before and I'll say it again. This society is headed lickety-split toward the day when it's a nation of Ph. D's standing in a dark room, up to their knees in backed-up sewage because everybody's too good to work in the trades. Let's see Schopenhauer figure out an answer to that one.

Every electrician I know in my own town is at least sixty years old. And without exception they all make very very good money. I know they do, because they send me their bills.

 

[Bolero]

I've asked several Trades workers, in construction areas, where they are from and what is their background, I'm kinda nosey that way.....

Most of them say, Eastern Europe, some from Mexico, occasionally USA, Almost all under Thirty...

Also re the Gas Stations, most owned and operated by Middle Eastern folks and their families...
Same with the little Mom & Pop shops...

When I go to the Super Malls to "people watch and have a coffee" all I see is groups of American kids in their Sport clothes with Apple Phones, Purple hair and guys with their pants hanging off their arse's...

Ya gotta love it....right....Only in America....I'm not going to worry about it because after I win that 700 million in the PowerBall, my Life will change, you think ???

 

[JimWagner]

OK, another trades story.

When I had my driveway repaved I hired an independent concrete contractor recommended by the guys who built my garage. I was chatting with him and commented that he looked like he was getting on towards retirement. He said he did plan to retire in a year or two but had hoped to train a few guys first so that his skills didn't die out. The problem, according to him, was that he simply couldn't find any young guys willing to get their hands dirty, do the work and learn the skills, let alone learn how to run and own their own business. They all seemed to believe that they'd sit at a desk, type on a keyboard and money would just pour down on them.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Again without DSL or 56K-connection? I think, this would not be a real problem to me.

There's still a great invention, called "writing a letter to your friends and give it to your next post-office to send it".

 

[Edward]

Thread drift is a long and hallowed tradition at the Lounge. Somebody could throw out a comment here about whether or not Tom Brady deflated those footballs, and somebody else would find a way to tie it in to the decaying evolution of education. We're like that here.

I prefer to think of us as people who never lose sight of the bigger picture. Context, and all that.... very wide context....

I was taught early on that formal education is to teach you how to actually think for yourself, give you a set of basic skills to enable you to continue your education on your own after you graduate, ideally for the rest of your life, and an appreciation for and an interest in a broad range of subjects and ideas. I was blessed with a number of teachers who taught to those standards and encouraged us to embrace that philosophy. And I've conducted my life accordingly.

What I see a lot today are academics who act, at least, as if knowledge you gain anywhere outside of the institutions they are part of is at best suspect and at worst worthless and invalid. They regurgitate facts and ideas they have been fed and little else. To many academics the word "autodidact" is a perjorative and represents someone who couldn't possibly know as much as they do about anything at all, not just their academic specialties. What arrogance!

Before I retired I spent 12 years working at a major university, rubbing sholders with academics every day. With rare exceptions they all acted that way.

The fact that so many academics act like that indicates a fundamental failure of the education system and its institutions.

I can only surmise that things must be very different in the US in higher education, as my experience in the UK has always been very different. (Of course, we have plenty of people here in the UK who will tell you all sorts about how dreadful universities are, but the difference between them and your good self is that the tiny percent of these people who actually went to university or have any experience of working in one are mostly people who left bitter because they didn't get the grades to which they considered themselves entitled...).

But don't just read textbooks. Read some of the books and other sources cited in the textbooks.

There are severla mantras I find myself repeating many times a term - think for yourself, read everything you can (including the primary sources - don't assume the textbook has it right), and "I will not be happy if I smell even a whiff of you parroting my opinion back at me, thinking that's how to get a good grade..." (Actually, one of the highest grades I ever gave wa for a paper that tore one of my publications the shreds.)

I had an interesting conversation with one of the carpenters building my garage 3 years ago. He was quite skilled, enjoyed his work and glad to have it. What he wasn't so thrilled with was still paying off his student loans for his masters in midieval English.

Fees-wise, we have a long way to go before the UK is quite as expensive as the US from what I gather, but sadly increased fees here have certainly bred a generation of Wildean cynics who have little appreciation of any value of an education other than what it costs in relation to what they expect to earn. Understandable, especially for the kids from lower income backgrounds, perhaps, but hugely depressing that so many are simply incapable of perceiving any value in tertiary education other than as a vocational qualification.

 

[MikeKardec]

That's a real problem with parents, too, above and beyond the educational system. Talk to the typical middle-class parent today and ask them if they think their kid should become an electrician and they'll throw their hands up in horror and declare CERTAINLY NOT, MY KID IS GETTING A DEGREE AND WILL THEN MAYBE TAKE A YEAR OFF TO TRAVEL BEFORE GOING ON TO GRAD SCHOOL!

I've said it before and I'll say it again. This society is headed lickety-split toward the day when it's a nation of Ph. D's standing in a dark room, up to their knees in backed-up sewage because everybody's too good to work in the trades.

A lot of the trouble with education is parents paying no more attention to the qualities of a college than they needed to in order to impress other parents with where their kids were going. A good many of them get themselves or their kids into severe financial straights because they don't shop well. I've recommended saving money by going to Jr College (where trades alternatives are available should that choice be made) then transferring, I've also recommended making a final year (or two) switch to a prestigious school for graduation purposes. If I remember rightly we had a number of students I knew switch over to USC for that reason ... though not from my college which was a credit cul de sac.

An idea I'm toying with these days is that much of our campus unhappiness is a long term outgrowth of tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people with Phds in all sorts of fairly useless subjects having to teach rather than do to make a living. Thus we have a huge population of professors who can do nothing but profess on subjects that are less and less useful to the outside world. If you want to study hard useful subjects that help change the world there are still many jobs. Damn near every "international" student is in those programs with the goal of heading home and making a difference. I saw very few Indians or Chinese kids studying "studies" or any of the "softer" subjects. You got to admire their feisty attitude!

 

[Fading Fast]

That's a real problem with parents, too, above and beyond the educational system. Talk to the typical middle-class parent today and ask them if they think their kid should become an electrician and they'll throw their hands up in horror and declare CERTAINLY NOT, MY KID IS GETTING A DEGREE AND WILL THEN MAYBE TAKE A YEAR OFF TO TRAVEL BEFORE GOING ON TO GRAD SCHOOL!

I've said it before and I'll say it again. This society is headed lickety-split toward the day when it's a nation of Ph. D's standing in a dark room, up to their knees in backed-up sewage because everybody's too good to work in the trades. Let's see Schopenhauer figure out an answer to that one.

Every electrician I know in my own town is at least sixty years old. And without exception they all make very very good money. I know they do, because they send me their bills.

That might be a Maine-specific issue (maybe) as in NYC, the electrician and plumbing trades are chock full of people of all ages and nationalities. We are currently working with a contractor (husband and wife team) of Scottish-Irish decent - great grandparents came over in the late 1800s - and all three of their children are doing trade work - even the two who went to college - as they understand that it is a more secure career than what one son tried first which was insurance. Not only in my apartment, but in the apartment building, I've met many electricians and plumbers and carpenters, etc., and it seems to be thriving and young. Not my guesstimate before we started to do this project, but definitely what I've seen over the last six months. And once you start working on a project like this, you notice other job sites etc - and, again, at least in NYC, I'd say the future for plumbers, electricians etc., looks bright and it looks like the young people both USA and foreign born have figured it out.

Edit add: I was on the cusp of going to a trade school but chose college for a lot of reasons, but thought hard about a trade because even in the '80s it was obvious that it was a way to make a good, secure living while "white collar" college-educated workers were already being laid off back then.

 

[HudsonHawk]

You don't need a college degree to work in the trades, or most other jobs that get your hands dirty. Electricians and plumbers make good money. But the educational system has tried mightily over the past 30-40 years to convince kids that they are too good to work in those jobs and that those jobs are beneath them.

I had an interesting conversation with one of the carpenters building my garage 3 years ago. He was quite skilled, enjoyed his work and glad to have it. What he wasn't so thrilled with was still paying off his student loans for his masters in midieval English.

There's quite a few folks who never went to college who think manual labor is beneath them. I've known a couple of young men who complained they were homeless because they couldn't get jobs, whom I offered to get work as a hand on a water well drilling crew. Yes, you're toting pipe in the hot sun and shoveling mud all day, but it's steady work paying $15/hr with plenty of overtime. It's not a glamour job, but it'll put some money in your pocket, allow you to get an apartment and a vehicle to drive. One or two took me up on it, but others did not saying it was beneath them. Beneath you? It's an honest day's hard work...are you really above that?

 

[HudsonHawk]

...I've said it before and I'll say it again. This society is headed lickety-split toward the day when it's a nation of Ph. D's standing in a dark room, up to their knees in backed-up sewage because everybody's too good to work in the trades. Let's see Schopenhauer figure out an answer to that one.

It's like Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano playing out right before you eyes.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That might be a Maine-specific issue (maybe) as in NYC, the electrician and plumbing trades are chock full of people of all ages and nationalities..

I think it very well might be a Maine thing, because a lot of the people who act that way are the type of people who came here to get away from the NYC area because it was too full of people of all ages and nationalities to suit them. The sort of people to whom "diversity" means being able to buy bok choy at the grocery store.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Ya gotta love it....right....Only in America....I'm not going to worry about it because after I win that 700 million in the PowerBall, my Life will change, you think ???

When I win, I'm donating $100MM to Lizzie's Presidential campaign. I'm hoping for a cabinet position in return, but will settle for an ambassadorship.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Minister of Energy and Baseball, right there.

 

[ChiTownScion]

You don't need a college degree to work in the trades, or most other jobs that get your hands dirty. Electricians and plumbers make good money. But the educational system has tried mightily over the past 30-40 years to convince kids that they are too good to work in those jobs and that those jobs are beneath them.

Hell's bells, it wasn't the educational system, or any college professor, that convinced me of that. It was my dad and my uncles, who were all in the trades themselves. "You're too smart to work with your hands! Work with your mind instead!"

Of course, the true craftsman employs both head and hands, but they always seemed to think that becoming a doctor (physician) or a lawyer was a better route for me. Given my choice, I'd have become a locomotive engineer, or even a subway motorman. Common sense won out, however, and I ended up as an attorney. First in my family to go to college, and I think that, for me at least, it worked to the best.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I can't imagine what is so fulfilling about being a corporate cubicle hamster busting your tail preparing some report that hardly anyone, including its intended recipients, are ever going to read.

 

[Redshoes51]

I teach at a small university in Mississippi... I have become more and more jaded with the quality of the students here. For the most part, they have such a high sense of entitlement... expect to do little and are aghast when they don't get the high grades they believe they deserve.

A few years ago, I had a young man in some of my classes from Germany... and he was a delight... He was smart... he was challenging... at times I feared the questions he would ask during class. He always scored the highest grades on exams and assignments.

I asked him one day why it was that he was at our small school in Mississippi, and not at one of the bigger schools in Europe. His reply was 'my grades weren't high enough.' His answer just blew me away. It was their way, though, of making sure that candidates were available for those jobs and careers that did not require a college education.

~shoes~

 

[JimWagner]

The inevitable result of the political football game we call K-12 public education. Sigh.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I imagine most of that "grades they think they deserve" stuff came directly from shallow, status-obsessed parents who raised them that way.