Matthew B. Crawford writes something that should be posted in every high school:
If the goal is to earn a living, then, maybe it isn’t really true that 18-year-olds need to be imparted with a sense of panic about getting into college (though they certainly need to learn). Some people are hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, when they would rather be learning to build things or fix things. One shop teacher suggested to me that “in schools, we create artificial learning environments for our children that they know to be contrived and undeserving of their full attention and engagement. Without the opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract and distant, and the passions for learning will not be engaged.”
A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive. There is a pervasive anxiety among parents that there is only one track to success for their children. It runs through a series of gates controlled by prestigious institutions.
For as much as people value higher education, there are too many people who are ignorant of economics, the law of supply-and-demand, and the efficient use of scarce resources. When every single person has a bachelor’s degree, the value of the certificate declines. If everyone wants and pursues a white-collar job, then there will be no one to fix cars, pick up trash, and repair faucets. Society will suffer because necessary jobs will go unfulfilled (until low-cost labor, like immigrants, is imported). In such an economic environment, the value of the white-collar job will fall while that of the blue-collar one will rise. As the article notes, this is exactly what is occurring in the United States today:
The current downturn is likely to pass eventually. But there are also systemic changes in the economy, arising from information technology, that have the surprising effect of making the manual trades — plumbing, electrical work, car repair — more attractive as careers. The Princeton economist Alan Blinder argues that the crucial distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with more or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered over a wire and those who must do their work in person or on site. The latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to distant countries. As Blinder puts it, “You can’t hammer a nail over the Internet.” Nor can the Indians fix your car. Because they are in India.
Well put. At the risk of sounding like someone who is advocating for a centralized, government department that manages all education, it is logical to argue that students need to be directed to where their interests and abilities lie. But this has not been occuring because blue-collar jobs have been unfairly stigmatized in the United States as fit for only “low-class” people. But, in this economy, they might be the smartest of all.
