On Sat, 14 May 2011, Michael Gurstein wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of gary > Sent: Saturday, May 14, 2011 12:44 AM > To: Triumph of Content > Subject: [TriumphOfContent] Dirty Jobs creator on the need for skilled > tradespeople in America > > Sent to you by gary via Google Reader: > > > Dirty > <http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/lxT3HbVYevc/dirty-jobs-cr > eator-o.html> Jobs creator on the need for skilled tradespeople in America > > via Boing Boing <http://www.boingboing.net/> by Cory Doctorow on 5/12/11 > > Mike Rowe, creator of the TV show "Dirty Jobs," testified before the U.S. > Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on the de-skilling > of America, and the way in which skilled manual labor has been undervalued > and derided in the USA to its detriment: > > <http://craphound.com/images/mikerowetestifying.jpg> A few months ago in > Atlanta I ran into Tom Vilsack, our Secretary of Agriculture. Tom told me > about a governor who was unable to move forward on the construction of a > power plant. The reason was telling. It wasn't a lack of funds. It wasn't a > lack of support. It was a lack of qualified welders. > > In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We've elevated > the importance of "higher education" to such a lofty perch that all other > forms of knowledge are now labeled "alternative." Millions of parents and > kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as > "vocational consolation prizes," best suited for those not cut out for a > four-year degree. And still, we talk about millions of "shovel ready" jobs > for a society that doesn't encourage people to pick up a shovel.
This seems to me to be a very good thing, in the longer run - people will hold off getting into these careers until the remuneration is sufficient to tempt them away from futile pursuit of post secondary academic training. Relentlessly chiselling oligarchic elites will be forced to cough up a decent wage if they want anything done in their country, and maybe these forces will conspire to revive a middle class (in the sane, north american pragmatic sense of a segment of the population earning a respectable middling income which allows them to live comfortably and not deep in debt). -Pete _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
