The Atlantic: "Can the Middle Class Be Saved?"

I vaguely remembered the topic, so I found it:

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/85354/

 

The corollary of that is: "You'll get a job in a factory just like I did, and you don't need no education for that." I got Cs and Ds and finished high school and got a job at the foundry and worked 40 years. They don't emphasize education because they didn't need it themselves. They send cues to their kids that they go to school because society tells you that you have to, but it's largely for social reasons, because there will be some kind of factory job there for the man who's academically inclined.

Two offshoots of that: Many professional jobs are now filled with women, and there are now a handful of families where the college-educated woman is the primary breadwinner in a white-collar industry and the non-college-educated man works in a trade and is in and out of work. However, humans tend to marry within social ranks and marry those similar values, so we see a lot of families with two college-educated professionals, or families with a male laborer who is in and out of work and a female working a secretarial job that they'd prefer not to work because they planned to be a stay-at-home mom but can't because her husband can't get a job (and increasingly, those families are breaking apart, or not forming in the first place).

And the latter are often jealous of the money made by the former, without realizing that they could have had that, too, had they at least attempted to lift a finger in school rather than just coasting by and telling anyone who would listen "D means Diploma."

 

Sadly Dick, I think you are right.

I wish there was hope for the arts/liberal arts/education kids who can't/won't become scientists. I fear the alternative would be a nation of Lazlo Hollyfelds (from Real Genius): all science/ no philosophy and thinking finding the answers IS the answer.

 

Only 28% of the population has a bachelor's degree of any kind. The liberal arts degrees tend to become the lawyers, CEOs, et al. Science and math are important for providing labor, but somebody's gotta have the vision to cast a vision for and run the company, somebody's got to have the creative ability to promote the company, somebody's got to entertain the populace ... there will always be a need for liberal arts grads. The vast majority of jobs in the U.S. are in service and cannot be outsourced. However, the higher-paying jobs will be in the sciences for one major reason -- it's a highly-specialized field with a very small pool of available job candidates.

 

I think the ultimate degree, for me, would be a hard science degree, probably pre-med, combined with either a philosophy or economics degree as a second major. That way, you have the law or MBA path with your humanities (or economics, which is a close cousin of humanities), but the engineering or medical path with the science degree. Or you can become a patent lawyer, which is actually a problem for some science fields because it pays better and they lose some of their best to law.

Most of the smartest people I've ever met - or at least the most thoughtful - are some combination of a philosophy or economics major.

To your prior post, my dad got kicked out of the house when he was 18 because he wanted to go to college. I've never heard the whole story - and don't really want to, considering how bad his employment life has turned out, probably traceable back to this moment - but from what I understand it got violently physical. My grandfather was that opposed to education. You get your ass in a factory or mill at 18 and start bringing home a paycheck. Like a man.

 

There's a cultural component to this -- I've seen it written about and every teacher or parent in a racially mixed school will understand it, but I haven't seen it (and don't know if it can be) quantified: African-American and Latino communities not only don't embrace education as much, they openly mock it. We've all heard about kids catching grief for "acting white." It's very real.

This also stretches to the white population when compared to Asian families -- the white families often can't believe how strict and demanding the Asian parents are about their homework, even as those same white families drive their kids all over the state to play club baseball or soccer every weekend.

 

Not a surprise at all. One thing I observe in the classroom (and yes, this is anecdotal and a small sample size ) is that those who struggle in school often have a couple of things. One is very little parental guidance at home (and if there is parental guidance, it's not positive). I happened to hit a drive thru after a football game the other night and the kids standing outside at 11:30 p.m. hanging out, lighting up and causing trouble weren't the ones with 4.0 GPAs. The other is a lack of understanding of the concept of delayed gratification. Because they don't see the value in school and either fail to receive or brush off any kind of parental direction, they believe they're more mature than they are. Essentially, at age 14-15, they try to become adults and make adult decisions (which too often involves drinking, drug usage and becoming sexually active) and they believe the entry-level job they get is the ticket to happiness, without realizing that the $7.25 an hour you're making now doesn't go too far when you have to live in your own apartment and support children. They conceive kids, drop out of high school ... you know the rest of the story.

The ones with strong parents who have multiple degrees? They're potentially getting lit up on the weekends, too, but they also know that there are some boundaries and if they cross them (or go too far), they'll never see the outside world again. They understand that what they're doing now is a path to something better, not something to nap through for seven hours so they can be well-rested to go out into the parking lot and light up. They also push themselves in school, because if they don't, they'll never see the outside world again.

Google "Hawley-Smoot Tariff" for Exhibit A. Was supposed to be the panacea that "saved" American jobs by forcing us to buy American. What happened instead was that Americans didn't have any money to buy anything and overseas countries retaliated with their own tariffs, and American goods weren't being sold anywhere. The result was tremendously increased unemployment.

This, to me, is the true source of the much-derided "income gap." It's not corporate greed or anything similar, although there are industries (journalism being one of them, if the reformers have their way, education will be another) where college graduates are paid slave wages, because there are way too many of us and too few jobs out there and too many publishers who think they can skimp on salaries by getting rid of experienced people and hiring young & cheap. But the reality is, 72% of Americans don't have a bachelor's degree. Less than 9% hold a Master's degree or above. Those people are in demand. The rest? A dime a dozen, especially if they lack specialized skills. And more and more, their jobs are either dependent on the economy (construction, trucking) or at risk of being automated/outsourced (manufacturing).

 

Dad: Good! good? What do you know about it? What do you know about getting up at five o'clock in t'morning to fly to Paris... back at the Old Vic for drinks at twelve, sweating the day through press interviews, television interviews and getting back here at ten to wrestle with the problem of a homosexual nymphomaniac drug-addict involved in the ritual murder of a well known Scottish footballer· That's a full working day, lad, and don't you forget it!
Mum: Oh, don't shout at the boy, father.
Dad: Aye, Hampstead wasn't good enough for you, was it? ... you had to go poncing off to Barnsley, you and yer coal-mining friends. (spits)
Ken: Coal-mining is a wonderful thing father, but it's something you'll never understand. Just look at you!
Mum: Oh Ken! Be careful! You know what he's like after a few novels!
Dad: Oh come on lad! Come on, out wi' it! What's wrong wi' me?
Ken: I'll tell you what's wrong with you. Your head's addled with novels and poems, you come home every evening reeking of Chateau La Tour...
Mum: Oh don't, don't.
Ken: And look what you've done to mother! She's worn out with meeting film stars, attending premieres and giving gala luncheons...

 

I grew up in a racially mixed school. This grieved me to no end -- people throwing their lives away because it was "acting white." There's an enormous African-American church in our community whose pastor is on TV every week (and is probably the only religious TV I watch). He is constantly telling his church that they need to get an education and work, because that's the ticket out.

It's amazing. My son was born in China, and was adopted by us (we're white) at age 1. We occasionally attend a Chinese church to help with his socialization as he grows up. The church offers language classes on Sunday afternoons. We saw it as an opportunity for our son to learn the language of his birth country, which would help him in his development as an Asian-American, but it's extracurricular, so we don't take it too seriously. All the other pre-K and K kids walk in with book bags and look really serious about what they're learning. It's an *academic* exercise, with midterms, final exams and more. But there's a cultural expectation about education -- even on an extracurricular scale -- that's much, much different than what we expect.

 

According to Wikipedia the LA Schools had a budget of 7.3 billion and in 2009-2010 had 694,000 students. By standard of comparision Prince George County in Maryland, which is on the east and less affluent side of D.C. spends about 12,000.

And Los Angeles Country probably pays higher salaries than PG. And before you start on a tirade about the unions one problem LA schools has is that if they have to pay more than most of the rest of the country. Would you rather live in LA, make 60K and commute from God knows where into LA or make 50K or live 20 minutes away from work, have a nicer house and live in Colorado?

This leads to some really big class sizes in the LA District.

 

A couple of things:

Back when I was covering school board meetings, the parents who came to them only inquired about sports related things: the track condition etc. and never about curriculum or testing standards.

One of my students a few semesters back (I teach community college) was late 20s had a wife and child. He was trained as an EMT and a firefighter. Couldn't find work in either field because towns everywhere are scaling back (part of the reason I can't find full-time teaching work). My student, the longer he was out of work, would have to get re-certified. That costs money, money he and has family has precious little of.

 

One thing I've been noticing when I look at job ads is how many now say master's degree or higher REQUIRED as opposed to preferred, as they used to. I always thought I could substitute my years of experience for education but I'm now beginning to think about finally getting an advanced degree.