At 22:16 22/06/2005 +1000, you wrote:
Keith
Let's get out timing right.
I am arguing that 20 years ago auto workers were by and large unskilled and that over the past 20 years their numbers have reduced significantly, but that those who are left are vastly more skilled and better paid.
And I know that first hand, I used to work on the Ford production line as a foreman.
Ah well, yes. But I was writing originally in the context of most of the workforce. A small proportion of jobs have indeed become highly skilled. I am constantly writing about this skill divide -- this was the whole point of my original posting -- that about 75% of all jobs have become substantially de-skilled (and state schools have thus dumbed down), whereas 25% are becoming more skilled (and why, in England, for example, there are now three consortia entering the fee-paying school arena).
Keith Hudson
Charles Brass
Chairman
futures foundation
phone:1300 727328
(International 61 3 9459 0244)
fax: 61 3 9459 0344
PO Box 122
Fairfield 3078
www.futuresfoundation.org.au
the mission of the futures foundation is:
"...to engage all Australians in creating a better future..."
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Keith Hudson
- To: Charles Brass
- Cc: [email protected]
- Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 9:49 PM
- Subject: Re: [Futurework] The future of education
- Sorry, Charles, but when you worked at Ford in Australia, what job did you have? Did you ever go onto the shop floor? How many workers did you know? How many operations did you have intimate knowledge of?
- Perhaps Ford in Australia is an entirely different place from Massey-Ferguson in Coventry that I used to know 30 years ago with five large production shops and one assembly shop which I used to visit every day for some years*. Except for workers in the toolroom, there were few jobs that could not be learned in 30 minutes, some in 5. I suggest that you have invalidated your own case by saying that Ford of Australia could take people off the boat. Modern factory workers are far, far, far less skilled than they have ever been. They don't compare, for example, with my blacksmith grandfather who was so fast and skilful that he had two strikers.
- (*At the time I worked there it was the factory with the largest production of farm tractors in the world and exported 80% of them. On my shift, I was in charge of quality control with responsibilities for the results of most operations from the hardening of the gear wheels to the final lick of paint in the [automated] paint-shop.)
- "Hugely more skilled"? No, I'm afraid not. The only really skilled people I knew were the metallurgists and chemists I supervised. There was also one old guy who used to ramble around the gear-cutting machines every now and again and I never did discover what his job was until one day a Prof of engineering at Birmingham university came into the shop and asked for him. It turned out that this old man had a little room of his own, slept most of the time except when brewing a pot of tea, and was a recognised expert in gear-cutting and could do things that the Prof couldn't. The old man used to set the gear-cutting machines for the operators. All the latter had to do was to ensure that the cooling solvent hose-pipe was playing over the cutting head.
- Keith Hudson
- At 19:40 20/06/2005 +1000, you wrote:
- in 774 Keith Hudson said (in part)
- "The reason why such a large part of the education system in the larger countries has become dumbed down is that the majority of the skills required in the job market have also become dumbed down as a result of industrialisation, mass production, automation, computerisation and rationalisation generally by the larger manufacturers (and many services) which increasingly supply the bulk of the staple consumer goods of today's society.
- For example, the manufacture of a car, which used to take 70 or 80 person-hours within living memory now takes only 25. "
- Sorry, Keith, but you have got the facts right, but the interpretation wrong. I used to work at Ford Australia in the 1980's when Ford basically took anyone straight off a boat into the plant. Sure, there are now many fewer workers, but they are hugely more skilled, and better paid, than their forebears.
- Charles Brass
- Chairman
- futures foundation
- phone:1300 727328
- (International 61 3 9459 0244)
- fax: 61 3 9459 0344
- PO Box 122
- Fairfield 3078
- www.futuresfoundation.org.au
- the mission of the futures foundation is:
- "...to engage all Australians in creating a better future..."
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Keith Hudson
- To: [email protected]
- Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2005 6:17 PM
- Subject: [Futurework] The future of education
- 747. The future of education
- In the last few weeks I've been changing my mind about the need for education vouchers. Or, rather, I've been changing my interpretation of what has been the reason why the standard of education in state schools in the larger developed countries has become increasingly dumbed down.
- I still think that education vouchers will be inevitable in several countries such as England and America, and the short item below from today's Independent on Sunday concerning the growing amount of extra private tuition being paid for by parents of state schoolchildren is further grist for the mill.
- I am now beginning to think that the basic reason is that a country's total education system -- state plus private -- really reflects the structure of the job market. The reason why such a large part of the education system in the larger countries has become dumbed down is that the majority of the skills required in the job market have also become dumbed down as a result of industrialisation, mass production, automation, computerisation and rationalisation generally by the larger manufacturers (and many services) which increasingly supply the bulk of the staple consumer goods of today's society.
- For example, the manufacture of a car, which used to take 70 or 80 person-hours within living memory now takes only 25. Even within the last five years, the largest American manufacturer of domestic washing machines reports that the number of person-hours required to assemble each one has declined from about 3.5 hours to 1.5 hours.
- Forty years ago, few (highly-paid) car factory workers in my home town of Coventry -- and I knew many because I supervised them -- thought that secondary education or any form of examination qualifications were unimportant, particularly for their sons. Why? Because, after a quiet word with someone in the personnel office, they could always get a job for their sons in their own workplace. Even if it meant their sons being "on the brush" at a lowish wage to start with, their sons could almost automatically advance to higher-paid machining jobs within a few years -- even into the most sacrosanct (and highly-paid) of all of them, the toolroom -- according to the informal "apprenticeship" system then operating.
- All the time, however, automation was being incorporated step by step and this, together with the post-war baby-boom effect of the late 1970s, produced a dramatic increase in youth unemployment. Since then the prospects for the young have only been partly alleviated by an increasing number of (generally poorly-paid) service-type jobs which have blossomed in developed countries because of the prosperity given to us by the ever-cheaper cost of energy from decade to decade.
- At the same time as the skills of most jobs have become dumbed down since, say, about the 1870s, a growing minority of very high-skill jobs -- in administration, financial services and in science and technology -- has been necessary. Whereas, in the 1870s, the number of these jobs would probably have amounted to no more than 5% of the population, the proportion today probably amounts to about 20-25% of the total. And the necessity for these sorts of jobs is growing. In England, this number of highly-paid, highly-skilled (or at least highly-protected) jobs is almost completely supplied by the 7% of those who were educated in private schools and who were, until fairly recently, catered for by a small group of highly favoured universities which formed, and then supplied, the networks of administrators, media and financial people, politicians and scientists who actually run the country even though they have to look over their shoulders occasionally at the whims of the public when it votes in general elections.
- But even this "establishment" of 25% of the population is insufficient and the big divide in general quality between the state education system and the private fee-paying schools has somehow got to be bridged unless countries such as China and India -- where education is much more highly valued (and often paid for) by even poor parents -- will not overtake us and consign us to the trash bin. This is why there is now so much controversy over the standard of state education in the larger developed countries and why, in England and America, quite a number of alternatives are now being (hesitatingly) explored by officialdom -- charter schools, home schooling, special schools and (in England anyway) a new breed of low-fee private schools, less pretentious than our traditional ones for the rich and better-off middle class.
- It is very interesting -- and probably significant -- that state education has only appreciably declined in quality during the last century in the larger countries. The standard of state education in the Nordic countries, Switzerland and Singapore is much higher. This is probably due to the fact that small developed countries -- if they are to survive and prosper in the modern world -- need a proportionately larger basic overhead of high-skill jobs than larger countries even though their "ordinary" jobs are also dumbing down. Accordingly, their social and income divisions are nowhere near as evident as in countries such as England and America.
- Where does this interpretation leave us? It leaves me in the position of no longer wanting to be repeatedly calling for more private education and free choice. It will happen anyway by parental pressure at the margin -- such as shown in the item below. Unfortunately, this process will take at least a couple of generations and a large number of children with potentially bright minds at birth will continue to be blunted by both poor state education and lack of motivation by parents who have themselves received only a rudimentary state education.
- In the meantime, the growing social, educational and income divide that is now characteristic of the larger developed countries will continue to grow -- also, probably, for at least a couple of generations. And there'll be some developed societies in which, for a variety of other reasons, the building of the bridge between the standards of state schools and private schools will not occur. I wouldn't dream to speculate on which countries will succeed and which won't.
- Keith Hudson
- <<<<
- ONE IN FOUR PARENTS PAY FOR EXTRA TUITION
- Nicholas Pyke
- A quarter of parents are forced to raid their household budgets to pay for extra tuition in basic GCSE subjects, despite fees of up to £25 an hour.
- Research from Mori, published today, shows that 24 per cent of pupils in England and Wales are taking after-school classes by the time they reach the age of 16, proof, according to critics, that the secondary school system is failing.
- The figures do not even include piano lessons or other leisure activities. Instead, parents are paying out for help in the essentials English, maths and science.
- The research, covering more than 2,700 pupils, was sponsored by Sir Peter Lampl, the millionaire businessman and government adviser.
- It concludes that families from minority ethnic groups are more likely to have paid for extra lessons than their white counterparts, and that the most popular subject is maths.
- How much advantage is gained, however, is open to question. Boys seem to benefit the most, according to an earlier survey by London University's Institute of Education.
- This showed that, on average, the grades of those boys receiving extra help went up by 0.4 per cent, enough to turn a GCSE D-grade into a C. But girls who had received out-of-school lessons showed little if any improvement.
- The use of private tuition to bolster schooling has become a burgeoning industry. Famously, it was revealed nearly three years ago that Tony Blair and his wife Cherie had hired private tutors from the elite Westminster School to coach their two older sons, even though they attend the London Oratory School, a high-performing state school.
- Sir Peter, chairman of the Sutton Trust educational charity, said "The proportion of secondary school children receiving private tuition, particularly in their last year of compulsory schooling, is incredibly high. It shows that many parents who can't afford independent school fees are nevertheless prepared to pay something towards their children's education."
- Sir Peter is pressing ministers to pay for bright children to attend private sector schools with strong academic traditions. His charity pays for an "Open Access" scheme at the private Belvedere Girls' School in Liverpool.
- David Cameron, the Conservative education spokesman tipped by many as a contender to lead the party, said "There's a lack of rigour in many parts of the education system and parents find themselves increasingly frustrated. These figures reflect that.
- "Schools are not doing enough to stretch bright children or those in danger of falling behind."
- A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said there is a new focus on providing lessons "tailored" to the needs of individual pupils.
- "The Government has a clear commitment to stretching the most able and giving additional help to those at risk of falling behind," he said.
- Independent on Sunday -- 19 June 2005
- >>>>
- Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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- From: Keith Hudson
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Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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