My Thoughts for March 1, 2015

Once again I’ve been confronted with my least favorite thing: change.  While talking with a friend of mine, I discovered our public schools have all but eliminated vocational training.  One of my memories of high school was the time I spent in vocational education classes.  To this day I still remember walking the path past a row of old brick buildings that housed these classes.  As students we referred to these classes as “shop classes.”  They were fun and interesting in addition to giving students a chance to experience hands-on training.  There were classes in drafting, wood shop, metal shop (where I made my first and only hammer), and automotive arts.  These classes were designed to give students a chance to experience real life occupations and to help those students who were not college bound a chance to find a niche in the working world. 

The reality today is if you were to visit a local high school campus, one would find it difficult to visit these vocational training classes.  Why?  Because they no longer exist.  The reason?  There is not enough money in the school budgets for these classes.  Tax dollars are scarce and politicians are afraid to raise taxes.  Instead, they have created a program called “Common Core.”  This track assumes all students are college material and that all high school students will attend college and graduate.  Big banks like Wells Fargo are salivating thinking about all the student loans that will be created. 

Here’s the reality again. According to recent studies only 1 in 5 high school students will graduate from college.  And as for you big banks, some studies show 60% of student loans are in default.  Wow! Common Core—is it really working? What happens to those 4 out of 5 students that elect not to take out student loans and attend college?  Are these students really doomed to work a lifetime at the lowest end of the income scale? 

These low-end jobs are an endangered species.  These jobs, many in the fast food industry, are being eliminated by robots and electronic ordering machines.  Soon when you go into a fast food establishment you will be greeted by an impersonal kiosk that will demand to take your order.  At the end of the counter will be one person unloading orders from a conveyer belt yelling out your order number.  And, you will hustle up, grab your tray and run for a booth.  Enjoy the synthetic food because when you leave there will be a gauntlet of homeless begging for your leftover greasy French Fries.  These homeless are the ones replaced by those electronic ordering machines.  And on the flipside, those fast food stockholders are happy, they’ve profited from reducing labor costs. 

It is history that will judge if change is good or bad.  Someday, future historians will look at this period of change and decide if it was a positive or negative.  I, for one, can only say even though I don’t like change, it is inevitable.  I can also say it is not a good thing when for the sake of profit a whole segment of our population maybe condemned to a life of poverty.  Our schools need to be a place where all students can be trained for success, college bound or not.