See, I think this is BS. This started during the Reagan era, where the costs of job training were suddenly shifted to the public schools, and it’s bugged me ever since:
By Anthony P. Carnevale, Research professor and director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, Georgetown University, Megan Fasules, Research Economist, Georgetown University, and Andrew R.
Denmark.
We should model ourselves after Denmark.
In terms of GDP Denmark’s taxes are high at 48.9%, compared to the US at 26%.
So what do the Danish people get for their taxes that we don’t? (Not including very good pastry.)
> Universal single-payer health care from cradle to grave.
> Free public education from kindergarten through graduate school.
> A livable Social Security benefit.
> Affordable subsidized child care.
> A well funded job training program.
Denmark is now working on legislation that would give each person a guaranteed annual income.
We should look to Denmark for our future.
I graduated from High School with a welding certification and three years of training as a machinist just in time for the CNC computer controlled machines to upend the whole industry. If I had tried to join the union at eighteen, I would have been competing for jobs doing set ups with master machinists who had thirty years on the job and families to support, so I bailed and never really made much money with my training.
I was also influenced by a conversation I had with Dr. Morgan, who was the hand surgeon for the whole area where I grew up, and also a guitar player. I was at his house visiting his daughter who played bass, and playing some music with her on his sweet SG.
He came in to see who it was playing his guitar and making time with his daughter, and struck up a conversation. When he found out that I was in the industrial arts program at school, he said “OK, give me back my SG.” When I asked him why, he said “Have you ever met anyone who has been working as a machinist for ten years who still has all of his fingers? They teach you all of that safety in school, and that’s well and good, but when you get on the job things change, and you find out where the safe zones really are and work to them instead. The problem with that is that those safety rules you are learning now are based on statistics, not immediate danger, and sooner or later the law of averages will catch up with you. You seem like a good kid, and I just thought you should know that.”
So as a guitar fanatic, I never felt all that bad about not getting to work as a machinist, and really, I don’t regret the training, as it has proven useful in many, many situations over the years.
If I had skipped out on the academic classes because of my occupational training, I would have been in bad shape, like some of the other kids were, but I lucked out and had some good teachers who steered me into math, physics, and the best classes the English department had to offer.
A lot has changed since then, and I’m not sure you can even get that kind of training in High School any more, so I have to agree with this article.