Victor -- Harry -- It's nothing to do with
education. A lot to do with quick profits. We seem to
have some modern Luddites here. Aeroplanes and World War
Two? Long before that Henry Ford had added a bit, and Charlie
Chaplin demonstrated it in that wonderful film "City
Lights".
I've
never heard of a world war being started by or for uneducated
people.
Between the wars a character called Basil Zaharoff sold arms to the
Allies in WW One and was knighted and given British citizenship.
Then it was alleged his agents were busy fomenting strife around the world and
selling arms to both sides. There's a great profit in
armaments.. Spitfires, bombs, warships, shells - what's the point of
making them to store in warehouses or nuclear silos and not using
them? If they aren't used, the stores fill, production
stops, and politicians with armament factories in their voting pool don't get
re-elected. Illustration: A British destroyer during the
Falklands war was sunk by a missile made in Britain and fired from an Argentine
ship. Someone profited, but it wasn't the sailors aboard the
destroyer or their families in Britain, educated or
not.
Kids
in western societies know it doesn't matter how much education they have, modern
society has to have a pool of unemployed people, so what's the point of wasting
time learning anything that doesn't teach you how to survive on the
streets. We are in about the third generation of this
attitude.
When someone complains about the "government getting on their backs ." or " . . in their pocket" I figure they believe a government is a god-like entity conjured up by some mysterious alchemy. Perhaps these people wish to be outside a community's laws, when they would be outlaws.
As one who believes a government is simply the mechanism by which a community decides it will be organised for the benefit of all -- like, for instance, the ten commandments of Judaic law which have passed to the Christians. Perhaps all the 10 should be legally enforceable?
-- jwhb
.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ]On Behalf Of Victor Milne
Sent: Friday, 4 August 2000 06:42
To: Harry Pollard; Keith Hudson
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: contemporary education
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ]On Behalf Of Victor Milne
Sent: Friday, 4 August 2000 06:42
To: Harry Pollard; Keith Hudson
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: contemporary education
Harry,
You're making a rather large assumption here,
namely that these companies are "changing the job to suit the available
personnel." I doubt you have any secret documents from the fast food chains
to substantiate this. Rifkin and many others discuss "de-skilling" and
it would appear that you've got the situation exactly
backwards.
KFC and the rest put pictures on their cash registers because they don't
want to bother giving you or any one else individual flexibility and choice.
It's cheaper for them if everything is standardized, and their employees only
need a two-minute learning curve. There is certainly nothing in your anecdote to
prove that the kid was incapable of making correct change for 20 wings. By your
own admission, there was no key to make any change.
It's also news to me that the modern industrial principle of breaking a job
down into (mindless) "bite-sized chunks" resulted from some incapacity
of Rosie the Rivetter (versus her serviceman husband) to build a Spitfire from
scratch.
It's all a matter of efficient (not necessarily humane) organization rather
than the intelligence and skill sets of the labour force.
I am quite sure our blacksmith could forge a horseshoe from a piece of
steel rod or even a lump. He never does. It's much cheaper and faster for him to
buy prefabricated shoes which only require minor adjustments on the anvil to
custom-fit them to our horses.
Take a clear and well-known example of de-skilling, the evolution of
the supermarket clerk's job. In the early 60's at the age of 16 my
girl-friend was a proficient clerk, which back then entailed touch-typing
one-handed on the old-fashioned cash registers, while using the other hand to
pick up the items to read the price and often to pack them in paper bags, all
the while carrying on a conversation with the customer.
It was not a superior education system which enabled my girl-friend and
others to learn this; the schools did not teach such things. It was simply the
available technology, and the employers had to be content with 2 months or 3
months for training or however long it took to become adept.
Now of course the cashier's job has been de-skilled. How long does it take
to learn to scan bar codes? Consequently they are paid a good deal less than
formerly.
As I've mentioned before, soon even this little bit will be taken away. In
the USA there are several hundred pilot supermarkets with self-service checkouts
(U-scan and U-bag) and now there are two in Canada.
Being 59, I'm grumpy about many things in our modern world but not about
some poor kid who gets stuck with pictures on the keys of his cash register. To
me it makes more sense to direct my curmudgeonliness at corporations which use
technology not to reduce work but to shift it from the paid employee to the
paying customer.
I won't lengthen this post by trying to address your comments about
discipline, beyond saying that I could furnish a story or two about poor
discipline in schools from every decade of my life, which leaves me wondering if
the situation has changed at all in my lifetime. I could also cite a few
examples of problem kids who performed brilliantly later in life, which leaves
me wondering if school discipline is anywhere near as important as most people
seem to think.
Victor Milne
From: Harry Pollard
I like the Kentucky Chicken's hot wings (peppery chicken
wings). As you may
know, the cash register keys in these fast food places don't have numbers
on them - they have pictures. If someone buys a piece of chicken, the kid
behind the counter presses the picture of a chicken.
I ordered 6 hot wings for about $3. The kid put them in a bag and rang them
up (pressed the '6 hot wings' key). Then I noticed that 20 wings went for
about $6.50. That looked like a better deal to me, so I told the kid I'd
take 20. This was a problem for the kid (which, at first, I didn't realize).
There was no key to press to change the order to 20 from 6. The kid finally
counted out 20 wings and gave them to me but didn't charge me. How could he?
This revealed a procedure that is used often to get things done when
there is a shortage of properly educated people. You'll recall that during
wartime, housewives were recruited to build aircraft. The job was broken
down into bite-sized chunks, with each girl doing her part. Then the parts
were put together by engineers, until voila - a Spitfire.
They are doing the same thing with our uneducated youth. Changing the job
to suit the available personnel.
know, the cash register keys in these fast food places don't have numbers
on them - they have pictures. If someone buys a piece of chicken, the kid
behind the counter presses the picture of a chicken.
I ordered 6 hot wings for about $3. The kid put them in a bag and rang them
up (pressed the '6 hot wings' key). Then I noticed that 20 wings went for
about $6.50. That looked like a better deal to me, so I told the kid I'd
take 20. This was a problem for the kid (which, at first, I didn't realize).
There was no key to press to change the order to 20 from 6. The kid finally
counted out 20 wings and gave them to me but didn't charge me. How could he?
This revealed a procedure that is used often to get things done when
there is a shortage of properly educated people. You'll recall that during
wartime, housewives were recruited to build aircraft. The job was broken
down into bite-sized chunks, with each girl doing her part. Then the parts
were put together by engineers, until voila - a Spitfire.
They are doing the same thing with our uneducated youth. Changing the job
to suit the available personnel.
Perhaps the only way to break through the situation here is to
end
compulsory education. I doubt whether the number of attendees would fall
drastically. Parents rather the law will make sure the kids get to school.
But, here at least, teachers must have the ability to throw unruly kids out
of the classroom. At the moment, they can be sent to a counsellor, who
sends them right back to the class. It's said that an American teacher
spends a quarter to a third of classroom time in discipline. A television
news show showed a teacher who admitted she was scared to fail some of the
kids in her classes.
I hope it is better in England.
Harry
compulsory education. I doubt whether the number of attendees would fall
drastically. Parents rather the law will make sure the kids get to school.
But, here at least, teachers must have the ability to throw unruly kids out
of the classroom. At the moment, they can be sent to a counsellor, who
sends them right back to the class. It's said that an American teacher
spends a quarter to a third of classroom time in discipline. A television
news show showed a teacher who admitted she was scared to fail some of the
kids in her classes.
I hope it is better in England.
Harry
