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New York City schools, for political reasons, explicitly bar Asians from academically competitive public high schools because there are "too many of them". The Ivy's do the same. That sends the opposite message that I think you're hoping for and incidentally, what does that say to the H1B visa holders and other innovative immigrants about how their children will be treated in America? Does that make them want to stay and innovate?
We're (probably) talking about two sides of the same coin. Immigration is a key contributor to the US' improvement as a workforce on the modern world stage, and right now immigration is a politically toxic conversation in the US. Political change will be required to encourage the immigration.
Speaking as a guy who went to one of those Ivys, my class was over 50% Asian when you add Indian plus other Asian. Ivys put much more emphasis on academics than they do on sports. Ivys dropped sports altogether during Covid.
I'd like to know what your classmates think of NYC setting quotas for Asian kids in public magnet schools. Then again, those guys would probably have the connections to get their kid a spot or be able to send them to private school anyway.
We're (probably) talking about two sides of the same coin. Immigration is a key contributor to the US' improvement as a workforce on the modern world stage, and right now immigration is a politically toxic conversation in the US. Political change will be required to encourage the immigration.
I don't understand what you mean. What political change is needed to "encourage immigration"? I have never heard of any foreigner who doesn't want to come to the United States whether they are educated or not. We let in about a million legal immigrants every year and we keep increasing H1B quotas, and don't even get me started on the illegal immigration issue.
I once had Libertarian leanings and I bought into NAFTA and other Trickle Down theories in the 80's and 90's but after all these decades we're still talking about how great things are "going to be" for American workers if we just trust in technology and free markets. I'll be retiring in less than a decade and I'm not too worried about my college-graduate kids. But I think we have a widening gap in America that the free market hasn't been able fix.
I don't understand what you mean. What political change is needed to "encourage immigration"? I have never heard of any foreigner who doesn't want to come to the United States whether they are educated or not. We let in about a million legal immigrants every year and we keep increasing H1B quotas, and don't even get me started on the illegal immigration issue.
I once had Libertarian leanings and I bought into NAFTA and other Trickle Down theories in the 80's and 90's but after all these decades we're still talking about how great things are "going to be" for American workers if we just trust in technology and free markets. I'll be retiring in less than a decade and I'm not too worried about my college-graduate kids. But I think we have a widening gap in America that the free market hasn't been able fix.
Immigrants come in, but they're not going to be able to easily share or impart the traits we've spoken about when their local audience doesn't want to hear it.
Half of this nation is openly hostile to immigration, and the parts of this nation most hostile to it are also the ones most vulnerable to the bleakness that was painted. Funneling immigrants into the coastal cities has been good, but it's not doing the South and Midwest any favors.
It's the places like the South and Midwest that need serious political and cultural correction, but it's the places like the South and Midwest who are most opposed to those political and cultural corrections. The change needs to happen in those places much more than in a place like NYC or California.
Once upon a time almost every high school had a shop program that would expose kids to the various trades. And vo-tech high schools designed to begin their training so they could apprentice upon graduation. Those have been dropped in most places in favor of "everyone should go to college."
These programs have been dropped because they are expensive and people do not want to invest in education.
Shop programs need materials, machines, tools and places for students to practice. Add in the liability aspect of dealing with these machines, potential for students to get hurt, and other issues, and you realize that it is cheaper and easier to throw kids into a science or math class call it a STEM program and convince them to go to college. Everybody can be an engineer, right?
. . . New York City schools, for political reasons, explicitly bar Asians from academically competitive public high schools because there are "too many of them". The Ivy's do the same. . . .
This could be a key aspect of the situation here in the USA, i.e., culture. Asians have a widespread cultural ethic demanding quality education and Asian parents drive home the education ethic in their kids (I know, sometimes to extremes).
We've had many long threads in COLO forums about "best schools" or education in general and one of the things most people agree on (especially the teachers who post) is that parents must drive the train if they want their kids to get a fine education.
Too many parents in our country just drop off their kids at school and expect minor miracles with little or no oversight on their part.
So, back to the topic, I'm willing to bet that some of those millions of people yet to be rehired grew up in homes where parents abdicated much of their responsibilities in favor of a school system doing the job for them. This dynamic is at work in both inner cities and rural hinterlands; it isn't really a political issue but one of culture: do we as a people value education or not. If we do, parents need to drive the train for their kids, no one can do it for them. If we don't value education then we need to stop scapegoating foreigners who arrive here educated, ready, willing and able to get busy.
Since college isn't for everyone I like the Vo-Tech approach. Ideally we can create our own trade and craft workers and stop importing people from south of the border to do the whole rainbow of construction and maintenance trades. But people still need some education on how to run their own small business, manage, hire, pay, bid on jobs, keep records, meet public obligations as a business and stay abreast of change and progress in their fields.
Other factors are at play, i.e., if we had a living wage it would go a long way to get people off their couches and into the workforce. The mess we have is not due to any single factor but a perfect storm of reasons.
We're in a global economy, it's huge, it's full of opportunity, but those opportunities will go to those who are prepared.
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Article in today's WaPo about how people with no college degree are being left behind as the nation starts to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. These people are not members of a skilled trade like the construction trades, many of whom have stayed busy during the pandemic even without a college degree.
Some stats from the article.
"Nearly 4 million adult workers without college degrees have not found work again after losing their jobs in the pandemic. Only 199,000 adult workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher are in the same situation." (I'm sure a lot of these unemployed people are found in the homeless populations around the country.)
"In March ... the overall economy added back 916,000 jobs. Only 7,000 went to workers with high school diplomas but no college degree."
"Horrigan’s research has shown that both minority females without college degrees and white males without college degrees are having the hardest time finding work again."
"But there’s an eerie similarity to what’s happening at this point ... with high-school educated workers struggling and what happened in the years after the Great Recession when men without college degrees had some of the hardest time finding work again. Many men after the Great Recession ended up so discouraged that they turned to alcohol, drugs and suicide, what became known as “deaths of despair.â€
There's a series of articles in the WaPo about how the rate of rural people "on disability" is double the rate for people in urban areas. Many of these are the no-college types with no skill sets usually found in urban employment centers. Here's a link to one of those article from which I pull this stat: "...disability recipients ... are disproportionately prevalent in rural America — where, on average, 9.1% of the working-age population receives disability, compared to the national average of 6.5% and an urban rate of 4.9" ... are even more overrepresented in the Southeast and central Appalachia. These are places economists have called “disability belts.†There are "families out there with multiple generations on disability.
All of the cited articles have much more info; my bottom line here is that not getting a college education creates major hazards for those with only high school or less.
For now, college graduates are at an advantage because so much has moved away from in-person to online. A lot of the non-college workers used to work the kinds of jobs that were adjunct to office jobs. E.g.: the sandwich shop down the street from an office building, the cleaning company that presses business suits. With work-from-home that is now unnecessary. I don't think this advantage will last forever. At some point, firms are going to figure out that there are college-educated people fluent in English and have internet access in places such as India, The Philippines, and elsewhere that they can pay 1/8th the salary of an American, not have to cover any of their outrageous health insurance cost. And they will be very happy to have the job.
A skilled trade should be viewed as equivalent or greater to a bachelor's degree. To become skilled at a trade take as long or longer than it takes to earn a bachelor's degree. But most non-college people are not skilled trades-people. To suggest that they are, is the same as suggesting all college graduates are doctors.
As for illegal immigration I will say what I always say on that subject: prosecute the employers. You know what country doesn't have much of an illegal immigration problem despite having better paying jobs than its neighbors? Russia. Try getting a job in Russia as an immigrant and see what happens.
Last edited by Mike from back east; 07-25-2021 at 06:36 PM..
Once upon a time, a high school diploma, driver's license and clean background was all you needed for many civil service jobs.
That changed. Today, many require a two year degree or two years of military. I'm not a parent but I think it might be a good
idea for college students to take as many tests they can for city, state and federal jobs. If they end up on a list and get called - the timing could be just right for them.
My father said one of the requirements of graduating 8th grade was; the boys had to make some sort of end table in shop class and the girls had to sew a dress. This must have been around 1939 or 1940. The end table he made came out nice! One of my sisters has it at her house. He went to Brooklyn Automotive High School and became a mechanic for a while. He later
worked for the phone company for many years (installer). He never went to college (and had no desire to go) and put 8 kids through Catholic schools.
Once upon a time, a high school diploma, driver's license and clean background was all you needed for many civil service jobs.
That changed. Today, many require a two year degree or two years of military. I'm not a parent but I think it might be a good
idea for college students to take as many tests they can for city, state and federal jobs. If they end up on a list and get called - the timing could be just right for them.
My father said one of the requirements of graduating 8th grade was; the boys had to make some sort of end table in shop class and the girls had to sew a dress. This must have been around 1939 or 1940. The end table he made came out nice! One of my sisters has it at her house. He went to Brooklyn Automotive High School and became a mechanic for a while. He later
worked for the phone company for many years (installer). He never went to college (and had no desire to go) and put 8 kids through Catholic schools.
Times sure have changed!
Makes sense for back then, but would be impractical now. With the cost of lumber and tools what they are, building a table today is truly more of a hobby, and the schools don't need to be in the business of teaching hobbies as a requirement. With globalization, etc... you can buy a table at Wal-Mart or Ikea for $50. My wife just built us a patio table last year and it cost well into the hundreds for the material and probably pushing the $1k mark or over when you include the initial cost of the tools. It looks similar to this table from Overstock. Given lumber and stain prices at Home Depot right now, there's no way you could build it for cheaper than the $374 they're asking. But of course my wife's was higher quality, nicer wood, but really the cost of building it is not cheaper. Back in the 1940s, such a thing would have cost proportionally much more. Today, in order to compete with that kind of product, you'd have to be REALLY good. Far better than a high school shop class will make you. And you can't save any money by making something similar from scratch. So there's really no point. Learning wood shop today would be more of self-satisfaction thing.
Although I fully endorse wood/metal shop as an elective and would gladly fork over the taxes necessary for my local school district to run such a program. There are variety of skills that success in such a course would demonstrate.
The sewing, is also not so necessary. Clothes today are extremely cheap. A sun-dress at Target costs $28. Again, making clothes is more of a hobby and not necessary for students to learn. Although I think they should be given the option to. I find myself frustrated by having to replace clothes that could be fixed... but again it's really not even worth the time to fix them. If 2 to 3 hours of work at minimum wage will buy me a dress, it's not even worth the many hours it would take to make a similar thing from scratch.
What I do think students need, which I very much wish I had - is cooking class. A skill I never learned in school or from my parents was how to plan, shop for, and prepare healthy, tasty meals efficiently. I always marvel at my mom's ability to prepare meals without seeming stressed and it seems to take her 30-60 minutes total from prep to serve. Whereas in my house, making food is the most stressful thing we do that causes many arguments because neither my wife nor myself are comfortable in the kitchen. THAT is something I needed from the get-go when I moved out of the house, and is also not something that can be bought cheaply. ie: a healthy restaurant meal costs $20 at least for one person.
Last edited by redguard57; 04-27-2021 at 04:24 PM..
Immigrants come in, but they're not going to be able to easily share or impart the traits we've spoken about when their local audience doesn't want to hear it.
Half of this nation is openly hostile to immigration, and the parts of this nation most hostile to it are also the ones most vulnerable to the bleakness that was painted. Funneling immigrants into the coastal cities has been good, but it's not doing the South and Midwest any favors.
It's the places like the South and Midwest that need serious political and cultural correction, but it's the places like the South and Midwest who are most opposed to those political and cultural corrections. The change needs to happen in those places much more than in a place like NYC or California.
OK but the South and Midwest, a.k.a. the Rust Belt and Appalachia, are the places where there is the most white generational poverty and where opioid addiction and dependency on government programs is strongest. I don't think they need "political correction" as much as they need low-skill jobs to keep them busy and to give them a sense of worth. And I cannot ignore the coastal cities, where Asians are routinely attacked, sometimes horrifically injured or killed, by idle non-white working class men. All those men and the country would be way better off if low-skill jobs were available.
I've said just about all I have to say on this subject. Thank you and SkyDog77 for the conversation.
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