Ed,
I don't agree with the original author of the article that there'll be an
increasing servants and nannie class. (a) The middle class have a host of
labour-saving devices now. (b) The bottom classes are nowhere near as
conditioned and biddable as they were in pre-WW2 days. (c) Residences are
highly stratified now.The rich and the poor don't live adjacently as they
used to a century ago. The rich and the upper middle class are increasingly
living in highly secure areas with no entrance for anybody without a
specific purpose.
As real value-adding work moves upstream (educationally) then I think the
underclasses and the poor will be left where they live now. Already in many
of our housing ('sink') estates in the UK the shops have long left, the
police hardly ever visit, community premises are vandalized, schools have
the lowest grades of teachers (either inexperienced or those who have
failed elsewhere), there are no sports facilities, social workers (who
don't live there, of course) work from steel-containers offices, etc, As
the welfare state is cut back due to the new austerity even social workers
will make sure of scheduling their daily diaries elsewhere. Welfare
benefits will be delivered by Securicor vans and armed guards. Very little
private charity work will be taking place, as in Victorian England because
the worthy ladies are now at work (usually earning salaries several times
more than the average person could earn)..
I think many parts of the big cities and many peripheral housing estates
will look more and more like the favelas that you knew in Sao Paulo. The
only entities (apart from drug gangs) that I can think of which will want
to go into these areas in a meaningful way on a daily basis will be private
schools so long as they receive a decent income per pupil (e.g. the same as
the per capita cost of the present state system). They'll be looking for,
and teaching, pupils with exceptional talent who are being increasingly
sought by the universities and for which, in due course, bonuses (like
soccer transfer fees) will be paid.
The new government in the UK, since its election a couple of months ago, is
already opening application lists for businesses, charities, groups of
parents, groups of teachers, who want to start new independent schools in
September this year. About 600 such have already applied. Almost all these
applications so far are from middle-class people for schools in
middle-class areas. But, in due course, -- if the present impetus is
maintained -- I think we might see an increasing number of business
proposals by competent firms able to move into the most broken-down,
untruly areas and run fine schools for those parents (probably mostly
single parents) who are strongly motivated to see that their children are
given worthwhile skills.
There has been too much whiff-whaff about education in the past few
decades. It is not about " a desire for learning" or "creativity" or
"opening young minds", etc. This is fine for children of the elite and
upper middle class who already have social confidence before they go to
school, who know during school that it's highly likely that there'll be a
good job for them somewhere in their parents' world, who have time, leisure
and sports facilities in a secure environment. But for 70% of the children
in the past 50 years most post-puberty education at school has been a waste
of time, and half of those children have been actively alienated from
anything to do with "learning". What they've really wanted were tangible
skills.
Keith
At 08:41 24/07/2010 -0400, you wrote:
If I read this correctly, we are heading for a major socio-economic
split. Those with an aptitude for IT and all of its uses will rise and
everybody else will fall. This suggests the emergence or continuity of
yet another socio-economic category, that of the care-givers and
organizers. Assuming the growth of an increasingly impoverished nanny
class, a world could emerge in which a great number of people have little
to do other than bow, scrape and mill about when they are not peddling
drugs and commiting petty crimes. Given that the IT class, the best and
the brightest, will spend its time perpetually staring into and poking at
little machines, there will be a great emergent need to ensure that
society does not collapse into chaos. A leadership class, perhaps
consisting of some of the best and brightest will have to be present to
ensure that everyone has a chance of staying alive and healthy. Or
perhaps all I'm saying is that we might expect to see lawyers, doctors,
bureaucrats, social workers, police and politicians to continue to
organize and look after things whatever other splits occur in
society. However, they would be increasingly indebted to the IT
overclass, which would make life easier for them by poking away and
devising new programs.
Ed
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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