I guess it was about twenty years ago that the governemnt here seemed to be pushing everyone to go to university! Get that tertiary education! Set your goals high! Get a degree! kind of thing and not to settle on an unskilled or semiskilled job. In the last few years it seems they may have shot themselves in the foot a little because now all different 'menial' sectors are crying out for labour.

Just read a report that the agriculture industry in Australia is 50, 000 workers short and the mining industry is 7, 500 workers short and my personal feeling is that the people who do want to get jobs are going for the skilled jobs and the people that don't want to work just plain and simply don't have to. We've made it far too easy for people NOT to work with the dole and other benefits available. And here we are bringing in overseas workers to fill those jobs that Australians either can't be bothered doing or won't 'lower' themselves to do.

It's doesn't even seem to be about money. Even the most menial mining job pays big dollars. And what is wrong with an electrical apprenticeship when you are at least earning a wage while you're working your way up? A lot it seems. People just really seem to be turning their noses up on getting their hands dirty and I think it is to the detriment of the country.

That's my thoughts for the day - chime on in if you've anything to ad. Am interested to see if a similar thing is happening in other countries.

(edit for typos)

Same thing in the UK & it is easier for immegrants to get here.
I hear Poland has a shortage of builders because so many skilled craftsmen are working in the UK.

We are seeing the same thing here, Copago. This country is raising a generation unwilling to get dirty, push a broom or learn how to wire a house. Many seem to expect executive pay in entry level jobs. Because of this white collar mentality, plumbers and electricians are making more than ever, because there are fewer of them. In recent months I am observing the mad scramble -commercials and pamphlets trying to get kids interested in trade schools.
Everybody can't sit in front of a monitor all day. Somebody has to cook dinner, change the light bulbs and take out the trash.

I agree KStew.

I think it comes somewhat from our parents, as well as ourselves, wanting more for us then what they had. To not have to struggle like they did. In a way the working class in some cases can pass down a feeling to their children, that just being a responsible member of the working class and not "improving" from the generation before is a bad thing.

That's a good point. I know my parents [ and my father in particular] wanted us to not have to work ceaselessly the way he did. As a young teen during the Depression he worked the Texas oilfields, cleaning the oil tanks - a hateful horrible job, sometimes executed in 100 degree heat. After that he worked in the shipyards when the war started, down on the coast. Welding, cattle ranching, electrical work, plumbing -he could do it all. But even in his desire for an easier life for the family, he some how raised unspoiled kids, who all know how to do several things. For that I'm grateful.

Every day I see more people unable to perform the basic skills of making change. Unless the cash register tells the change due, they are lost.

I did not go to college. I was supporting my mom and I at 17.

Learning to do many things is an advantage. Not even attempting to learn is a disgrace.

I have done everything from empty the trash to run a company. It takes all kinds of people to make the world work. My first job paid $1.25 hour. My last job paid $25.00 hour (10 years ago).

You may start out as unskilled. However, if you remain there, it is a loss.

Quote:

---

Every day I see more people unable to perform the basic skills of making change. Unless the cash register tells the change due, they are lost.

---

This is the most commonly observed, most obvious symptom of what our kids don't get taught or have no desire to learn. When I was a cashier, one had to know how to count change -from the silver on up -not merely handing the bewildered customer a jumble of bills and spilling quarters on the counter. Yet it happens to me everyday.
We also had to memorize vegetable prices and also what was on sale the following week. Can you believe it?

What confuses me about pushing everyone to get a higher education is that most times, book learning and common sense do not run together. I didn't go to college but because of the job I got, I'm making $3 an hour less than my friend, who did go to college. Why pay upwards of $150,000 to get a piece of paper that says "I'm trainable"?

Rayven - I have trained people to perform a job. Yet, they went to college and I did not. In my many years of working, I found there were times when the person who went to college did not have a clue on how to operate in the work force much less do the job they were hired to perform.

I gained skills I knew would carry me through anything. Then I added the skills which interested me. Even though I work at home as a Domestic Engineer, I still strive to increase my skill database on a daily basis.

Perhaps that is what is lost in the world today. The desire to learn anything new, especially if it takes effort of any kind.

Sorry to break in. For as long as I can remember I've just wanted to 'learn' things. Once I even stuck two hat pins in the hole of a spool of thread, then plugged it into a wall outlet. Trust me...I learned something that day!

I guess my point is, everyone isn't meant to go to college, just as everyone isn't mean to learn a 'trade'. I went to college and loved every minute of it and high school bored the heck outta me. But I can still fix things and take out the trash and mow the lawn and clean five litter boxes--then go back to painting, writing, reading or whatever.

People should do what they WANT to do, and what interests them and stop worrying about what other people will think. Learn to listen to people with different skills and interests, and ask them questions. Read things you wouldn't normally read, visit places that aren't first on your 'places to visit' list.

Getting wordy here, so sorry. Part of the problem is the media. Seriously. Every generation since the early 20th century has been bombarded by 'things' they're 'supposed' to have to 'be somebody' or to 'be cool'...whatever. To get those things, you expect a wage that will pay for them (whether you need any of those things or not).

Guess my philosophy is: "Be interested. Be informed. Be open. Be appreciative." Everyone deserves appreciation for something, no matter how 'menial' it seems (I hate the word 'menial' it's judgmental).

Thanks for listening!
woboogie

As to the making change issue - my first job used an old fashioned cash register (non electric) that most definitely did NOT tell what the change was. First day on the job, my boss spent five minutes or so showing me how to make change, and although I stumbled a bit, it didn't take long to catch on - it's not really very hard. Loved those customers who would give a ten, a one, and 13 cents for a five dollar and 38 cent charge "to make it easier for you". These days, you do something like that, even when the machine tells them how much change to give, and they still look at you like you have two heads..... Thing is - they don't know how to make change because no one taught them how, and no one taught them because they really don't need to know. The machine does it. Same way no one teaches them how to fire up the coal furnace, or feed the horse, or put clothes through the mangle.

I don't really think this thread needs to degenerate into a 'kids these days' rant - personally, I think kids these days are mostly fine. At least, the ones I know are. The problem has arisen due, I think, to a combination of short sighted government policies, and the tendency, as noted above, of parents to want an easier life for their children.

Thirty years or so ago, it became obvious that the factory jobs of the past were going to disappear. Factories that used to employ 200 people now employ 7, because most of the jobs have become automated. So, schools started encouraging those who would have gone into the factories to get higher education, as the jobs of their fathers would no longer exist. This is fine, as far as it goes. Trouble was, no one was really thinking about WHAT higher education they needed. We have millions of people coming out of bachelor of arts programs that may have enriched their lives (I certainly hope so) but that do not in fact teach them any skills. At the same time apprenticeship programs began to be dismantled; I don't really know what the rationale behind that was. Reality is - a job as an electrician is in fact skilled, whereas most of the jobs you can get with your degree in English, or child psychology, are not. No surprise it pays better - why shouldn't it? Chances are it is more valuable to society. (Can you see my blue collar roots showing?)

Not everyone is suited to white collar work, and it was a mistake to funnel so many people into it. Trouble is, class is involved - a job as a cubicle rat is still looked at as 'better' than one as a skilled tradesman. As for the truly 'menial' jobs - working on the slaughterhouse floor, or as a labourer on a road crew - no one wanted to do those in the past either, they just had no choice. Being up to your elbows in pig guts or shovelling hot asphalt in the blazing sun are lousy jobs, and I don't blame anyone for not wanting to do them.

Agony - one other problem which is arising for blue collar work force is young people with degrees whose fields of study don't have openings after they graduate. They end up in positions outside their fields where they start above workers who have done those jobs for decades and try to apply, usually taking a hammer to a square peg and trying to get it into the round hole, what they learned in school to the job they have. Which does not work, because the job they have does not relate in the same way at the blue collar level, to what they learned in school. Thus the blue collar workers end up with new work code that makes their jobs less efficient and more difficult.

Agreed BxB. When I started as a dish washer, we had a 3rd year law student and a lacrosse player in the kitchen. They were both working there to get outside experience in case their careers didn't work out.

Quote:

---

I don't really think this thread needs to degenerate into a 'kids these days' rant - personally, I think kids these days are mostly fine. At least, the ones I know are. The problem has arisen due, I think, to a combination of short sighted government policies, and the tendency, as noted above, of parents to want an easier life for their children.

---

I don't see this turning into a wholesale teenager complaint thread at all. I believe that for every spoiled kid there are two who are hard workers and long term goal setters - I've got one myself. But on the other hand I see a pronounced trend the other direction, too. It does no one any good to pretend that our kids in general are not being softened and robbed of basic skills by their dependence on technology.

I didn't see this thread degrenerating into a 'bad kids' thread either. Although I agree with KT that today's school-age children are much to dependent on technology. It's fine that they learn the technology--they absolutely have to to make any sort of future for themselves.

That being said, every school child should still be taught basic skills that not all that long ago were taken for granted: basic (and higher level) math and science, physics, English, history (although what I got was the watered down history, better to study it on your own), and civics.

My son could never have gone to college; his schizophrenia would not have permitted that. In fact, he had trouble holding down any job. It made me very angry when people would call him lazy or a 'moocher'. He would've worked if he could. He was a good kid (he passed away 3 years ago). I even helped him take some basic computer classes.

Think I'm digressing. There will always be a need for both skilled and unskilled (whatever that means...) labor. Most of us have done our share of both and should relate.

Look how many centuries it took (most of) the world to realize that the feudal system wasn't the be all and end all of economics and societal growth?

Hope that made some kind of sense. It's late here!

woboogie

I was informed today that the reason that meat and deli managers make more than head clerks or any other department manager is they are considered "skilled labor". The managment portion of their job is no different than the management portion of bakery, yet they get bonuses and regular raises. I'm confused.

Maybe they had a better union in the past?

It is that way in NY as well, the Deli department gets viewed as you stated Rayven in the cases I have seen.

Knew I should have gone to Deli, at least then if I did a job a monkey could do (like I do now), I'd be a "skilled" monkey.

To return to Copago's first post, I think one of the biggest problems is the massive 'qualifications inflation' of the last few decades, which prolongs adolescence and dependence well into many young people's 20s.

If 40% or more of people in the age-range 21-30 have a bachelor's degree, then it's not worth all that much, and many will want a master's degree (plus).

I really shouldn't get on a soapbox. However, it seems to me that if schools did their job really well, and made sure that most kids could not only read but also write competently by age 16, it might be possible to break the inflationary spiral.

We've reached the point where competent writing by an undergraduate or even an MA student triggers the plagiarism alarm in many British universities.

One evening about ten years ago an undergraduate from my alma mater asked phoned me as part of an appeal for donations ... After we'd been chatting for a few minutes I asked her what she thought she'd gained from her first year there. Her reply, 'I've learnt to write essays'. When I told her that it used to be taken for granted that fifth-formers and sixth-formers (roughly grades 10-12 inclusive) could write tolerably well structured essays (even if the content was mediocre) she was amazed, to put it mildly!

It seems perfectly obvious to me that the universities are being misused as a secondary school remedial sector.

Now it's high time for me to get off my soapbox.

(Edited to correct typos)

When I started kindergarten, my parents had already taught me to read and write, at least on a very 'elementary' scale, as had many of my schoolmates. Why do parents expect the schools to do this for them now?

The students whose parents didn't teach them early on were behind and stayed behind.

Schools are expected to do too much 'parenting'. BTW, both my parents worked.

woboogie

Well ... When I started school long ago, I was completely unable to read, and as far as I know, the same went for all the other kids in the class.

My parents saw teaching reading as the job of the school and had complete confidence in its ability to do this. Their confidence was not misplaced, either.

When, in the 1970s, it became increasingly common for parents (in England, anyway) to teach their kids reading I took it as an indication that they were beginning to lose confidence in the primary schools.

Not everyone possesses a university mind. There are quite a few folks who learn using their hands. Who would repair our automobiles? Who would stock those supermarket shelves? We all learn in different ways. What is important though is to work at a job you like and to give it all you have- no matter what the job.

This may not apply to all situations, but it is something I have been thinking about.

I have a meager high school education, and am a manager - for a deli. I find it interesting that my upstairs neighbor, who is about 10 years younger than I am, is going to college classes to become a manager at the gas station she works for. Now, I wasn't hired into the managerial position, but I was promoted, relatively quickly, by working hard and learning the job well. I wonder if it isn't easier for these 'kids' to sit through some classes, than it is to apply themselves to what they are doing, and work their way up? Now, with jobs such as mine, a piece of paper in no way assures that you will be better at the job. It makes me wonder when a few classes became the equivalent to, say, a year of hard work?