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While I disagree with Freddie deBoer on a lot of things, especially his ongoing war with his commentariat about gender, his thoughts on education seem pretty solid. His new post https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-commentary-is-dominated is no exception, though he puts in a bit of boilerplate declaring on faith that of course groups can be equalized somehow, even if individuals can't, despite giving no reason to believe that of any particular group or groups. This seems a pretty paltry fig leaf, but oh well.
I suppose if I want to get more of his view on a way forward, I should read his book, The Cult of Smart, but I don't want to just now. Based on his blogging, he seems to think that moving money from smart, productive people to stupid, unproductive people is the best solution, but this doesn't solve the fundamental question of allowing people who can't contribute much economically to live in a worthwhile fashion that allows self respect.
My state legislature has been debating plans to fiddle about with small levers at the margins to make up for Covid losses and "improve education." The levers are very small indeed. An extra half hour in the day? More private bathroom stalls? The only topic that made some sort of sense was career and technical education. I've been thinking about one side of this, trying to help my husband fix a leak this morning, and reading some thoughts from Internaught at DSL lately about crumbling infrastructure. Every time I interact with a Trades produced physical object, I realize that they are made for the large, strong hands of a young man who has been working on manipulating physical objects with weight and mass for years and decades. This probably makes sense from a materials engineering perspective -- assume that a mechanic or tradesman will be interacting with the object, and it can be heavier, with a tighter seal, probably more durable. But it seems like something of a hard sell, getting people to work with these heavy, sturdy objects for decades at a time when they don't have to, and don't get much status out of it, and most people can't afford . Giving out money doesn't seem all that helpful when we're all living in a crumbling, unfixable physical environment, and the computers can do 80% of the writing, calculating, and art, but can't keep the utilities repaired.
I would like to see more emphasis on humans as embodied, physical, tool using beings, but am not sure what steps might lead in that direction. I was listening to a podcast the other day by a Waldorf kindergarten teacher who had started taking his classes on walks to the park all morning, every morning, and that it worked out very well for them, but this was a nice, safe forest park in a place with decent weather much of the year. I don't really know where to go with these thoughts, though. It seems like kids need more physical, sensory experiences, but it seems like a hard pitch, perhaps something to do with laptopping being high status and easy on the body, as is mentioned in the thread on class.
Everyone wants this and everyone want to make sure their kids go to college and become symbol manipulators. Tragedy of the commons, ain’t it great?
I don't necessarily want my daughters to become symbol manipulators. Sure, I'm glad they're not growing up in a society where they have to be oyster shuckers at six, seamstresses at 12, bear, cook for, and clean for 8 children, and blind at 50.
But there's a lot of space between that and a laptop career, which doesn't seem like a great idea either.
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I dunno why so many people, including especially college educated people in white collar jobs, are hostile to the idea that the trades are overrated. I have observed this on both sides of the aisle and especially over the past 2 years. Yeah, if the trades are great, then quit your office job and do trades. I don't see anyone taking up the offer. But the catch is, you have to downgrade your living standards accordingly (you cannot just do trades and live off your accumulated savings). There is this romanticized notion that people doing things with their hands is superior or more authentic to dealing with abstractions (although some trades work does require decent math aptitude).
If one cannot cut it in college, then the trades are probably a better alternative , although it's not like that is the only option, but the data still shows college is better, even . The biggest mistake is the college-for-everyone default, which can account for the high attrition rate, not that college itself is a bad deal.
It seems like PMC people have better lives in almost every way compared to trades people, college indoctrination notwithstanding, but yeah, let's choose the worse option instead because it's more pure.
Because white collar types have no idea how much it sucks to work a blue collar job.
A white collar worker pays $400 for a plumber and somehow thinks the plumber gets to keep all that. They don't realize the plumber is just an employee making $30/hour. In any case, the plumbing company has to pay for a million things including an office, someone to answer the phone, trucks, equipment, gas, driving to the job site, health insurance, social security, medicare, people who don't answer the door, people who don't pay, licensing, bonding, worker's comp, family medical leave, Yelp advertising, and all the dozens of fees imposed by city, county, state, and federal governments, etc... The owner of the plumbing company will probably get rich, but only at extreme personal cost. In the end a business making 500k in profit might sell for only 2-3x yearly earnings because everyone wants to collect a paycheck, not to be responsible for a giant hassle.
There's a reason almost anyone who has a choice chooses a white collar job.
It's not unheard of for the plumber to be the owner of the plumbing company ... but yeah, even in white-collar "guy sits at a desk working billable hours all day" jobs the overhead may be more than the salary, and I believe it's much worse for blue-collar non-desk jobs. I sometimes have contractors coming from 60 miles away, and the company may be billing me $400 for an hour's work but they're having to pay for the commute and the downtime too.
I'd also add "someone to do the accounting" to your list. Between tax issues (I just had to file an amended return, over a situation 5% as complicated as what a typical small business deals with...) and money management issues (wanna just trust Silicon Valley Bank to handle everything?) it seems like an indispensable skill for a small business owner to have access to.
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IME tradesmen are mostly not ‘couldn’t cut it in college’ types, because the trades generally reward IQ even if there’s no requirement to formally prove your brainpower. Instead what really distinguishes tradesmen from their white collar counterparts is some combination of poor socialization/lack of patience for professional class niceties/general unwillingness to conform with the authorities of the day which prevents or retards academic success. That’s also where the stereotype of all being divorced alcoholics comes from- poor socialization and unwillingness to be polite or follow others’ arbitrary preferences is, well, exactly what I just said.
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Personally, I'm probably thinking more of lower middle class, education sorts of people who can't maintain our houses, and also can't afford to hire anyone else to do it either, but this may be specific to my own experience.
In this context, I'm also thinking of Freddie's solution of "so give people money then," which seems like a recipe for more currency chasing less goods and services, since there doesn't seem to be any attempt at replacing symbol manipulation with anything communally useful. But as I've said, I haven't read The Cult of Smart, and there might be more about that there.
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I think a big part of the debate is fundemental disagreement about what actually constitutes "the worse option"
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I'll be very happy if my daughter learns a physical trade and makes a decent living by it, and rather the opposite if she decides to go to university to get a useless degree or to fail getting a useful one. So please specify who you mean by everyone.
Would you, though?
Consider that jobs come with a physiognomy and a daughter who looks like "Barry, 63, Plumber" ain't gonna be fighting off suitors to give you grandchildren. Are you still very happy?
Not the OP, but it she's happy, then yes, I'm happy too.
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I have some doubts about that. Granted, women in trades are rare, but the few that I know or otherwise see appear normal, and not like old men. Low on make-up, rather tomboyish, somewhat more butch than the average woman but by no means extreme. Perhaps the sample size is too small, perhaps it's a regional peculiarity, maybe it's my perception that's off, but I don't see them as being substantially less attractive or lower-status than women in female-coded jobs.
Unless they all turn bad at some point and become literally indistinguishable from men, in which case ouch, but I have no anecdotal evidence for that.
Note that you have to dress in a practical manner for these jobs. If you do any kind of physical work you can't dress up much, it'll just get ruined and get in the way of your work. You don't know what they look like when they're out on a date.
True. But I'd take that in favor of my observations that women in trades don't look terrible.
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If we are pulling extremes - how does the chances of grandchildren compare to those of non binary, blue haired, rabid feminist with useless degree in gender studies writing for something even more two or three tiers below Jezebel?
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I would be totally fine with my kid becoming an electrician or welder. I think if he's smart enough he would have a higher quality of life as a member of the laptop class, but in a trade it would still be a lot higher than you get delivering pizzas. I know a lot of people who didn't quite cut it in college and now work as cashiers or baristas or waiters in their early 30s. I think those are the type of people that should really be looking at trade school. They're easily smart enough to work in a skilled trade but are wasting their potential in totally unskilled work because the only paths they saw in life were white collar work like their parents or to just keep doing the part time jobs they had in school.
If you can be a doctor or an engineer or something then by all means do that, but mediocre students should be shunted towards trades instead of being sold a bill of goods that in college they will discover previously unknown academic talents once they take out $50k in student loans.
The thing is, people think trades are for slackers ..not really. You need good work ethic to succeed at it. You have to take instruction well, have respect for your own safety and those around you, and 'hustle'. Probably barista or cashier jobs is all these people can do, lacking the brains or the conscientiousness to succeed at college or the trades.
Also ,trades school is expensive too (google search shows a $5-15k, which is not insignificant and even close to college), buying tools, and certification . At least with college debt you have more payment options, lower interest rates, more forgiveness plans and so on, plus a valued credential. If you fail to graduate, then , yeah, the money is wasted.
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