Thank you, Keith. When it comes to education, I believe that the greatest
force for positive motivation is rapid social change and the prospect of
further social change. I was born in rural Saskatchewan during the early years
of the great depression. Things were absolutely hopeless at the time.
University, even high school, were viewed as reserved for the priveleged and
well to do at the time. Then the war came along and changed everything.
Enormous possibilities opened up and kids from formerly dirt poor families
could go to university if they wanted to. Even kids with backgrounds like mine
could think of getting good professional jobs in a rapidly changing world.
You mention the Sao Paulo favelas. I have no idea of what the favela I was in,
ironically called 'Heliopolis', is like now, but when I put in my month there
some thirteen years ago it was what might be called an 'enclosed place'. No
matter how bright you were, there was little hope of getting out. Yes indeed,
Anselmo put in long nights of study because he might try to get to university,
and little nine year old Veronique was doing better at the charitably run
English classes than most of the adults in the class, but what hope was there
really? Universities were free (I believe) but most entrants were from
families that could afford the tutoring that enabled kids to pass difficult
entrance exams. If Anselmo got in, he'd have to do it all by himself. As for
Veronique, as a teenager she became an organizer trying to keep slum kids from
sinking into the drug and crime world the favelas offered, but I don't think
she ever got out of the favelas herself. If she did, she'd probably be putting
her english to good use by doing nanny work in one of the fancy hotels downtown.
So, for poor young people to have positive, uplifting views of life, to see
themselves as having possibilities, something around them has to be changing
for the better. Otherwise it can't happen. Farm kids stay on the impoverished
farm, kids in mining towns get jobs in the mines, kids in fishing towns try to
make a living catching fish, kids in the favelas peddle drugs, but it's really
all about getting from today to tomorrow, if you're lucky.
I don't believe that kids from the poorest stratas of society are less
intelligent than middle or upper class kids. However, unlike the kids from the
middle and high stratas, they mostly live in an enclosed place with little hope
of finding a way out.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Keith Hudson
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION
Sent: Monday, July 26, 2010 9:42 AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Servants and Nannies?
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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