Ed,
At 15:40 26/07/2010 -0400, you wrote:
(EW) 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.
What say you to the notion that in whatever society there happens to be the
best motivation is the knowledge that there are definite opportunities
ahead . Even in a no-growth hunter-gatherer society the adolescent boys
know that the girls will only marry those who can demonstrate sufficient
adult skills.
(EW) 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.
All this is very tragic. What I was suggesting before is that this is the
same sort of bleak prospect which lies in front of increasing numbers of
young people in what economists still call "advanced" countries. For me to
have written this, say, 50 years ago when I was a young man, when
interesting, worthwhile jobs were opening up in any part of the country,
would have been crazy. Today it is a realistic statement for anything up to
20% of young people in the UK and a great deal higher in many northern
towns and cities, even in some of the areas of the most prosperous cities
in the south. This started about 20 years ago -- from before the credit
crunch -- and was infrequent enough to be overlooked by most in a
London-dominated society but it's crept up on us ever since. In several
European countries -- those that "graduated" from agriculturalism (the
"Med" countries) or from USSR-domination (the Baltic trio of countries) --
jobless figures are much higher still.
(EW) 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 think that Margaret Thatcher's statement that prosperity trickles down
from the elite to everybody is quite correct -- but only in expansionary
times. In static times, however -- never mind really bad times -- the
trickle stops and the elite become highly protective of their jobs and
social networks. So, in practice, we can only really hope for full,
satisfying employment when the present type of economy changes to something
entirely new.
I don't believe that kids from the poorest stratas of society are less
intelligent than middle or upper class kids.
True, but we also have to remember that the rear cortex (where all the
basic skills are learned and constantly rehearsed) is irremediably shaped
in pre-puberty childhood. Nothing clearer than this has emerged from both
the neuroscience labs on the one hand and educational surveys on the other.
The vicious circle of experiential poverty has to be broken at a very young
age but even this would not be enough if there were not also a rich swathe
of new opportunities available for the post-puberty teenager to have a go at.
(EW) 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.
Well, I'm not quite so pessimistic as this because 90% of new ideas occur
to young people. Usually, of course, the good ideas are immediately taken
up and exploited by the world at large and we forget their youthful origin.
But today we've never had such a high proportion of young, unoccupied
people, nor have they been so interconnected as they are today -- as they
are, with their mobile phones and Internet links (both of which will become
increasingly cheap in the years to come). If there's going to be the
possibility of a path to a new way of living and working -- a new type of
economy in which everybody has a chance of a worthwhile, satisfying
occupation -- then I'm in no doubts whatsoever that young people will find
it -- not governments or adult institutions. But I'm also fairly sure that
a set of brand new technologies (particularly concerning energy) must also
be created, so it's very much a matter of repeating that "If"
Keith
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[email protected]>Keith Hudson
To: <mailto:[email protected]>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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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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