Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Winstonm]

Perhaps. For better or worse, each of their votes counts just as much as yours.

 

Agree. Which is why Richard is so right that a S.C. appointee is so critical to protect voting rights for minorities, and why redistricting will have to occur to bring about a better balance of power. I heard on NPR yesterday that the Tea Party faction comes from districts that are 83% white and vote 18% more Republican than the average Republican-majority districts. Because of the changes in campaign finance laws, these Congressmen are not as needful of party support, and without earmarks the Speaker has less power to please, so they are free to adhere to ideological principles without fear of party or voter reprisals.

 

What has happened is that a tiny minority has imposed its will on everyone and has successfully shut down government - at least as a practical matter.

 

Because redistricting will take so long, the only possible action I can think of to nullify their clout is for both Democrats and moderate Republicans to join forces and form a super-majority, which may mean moderate Republicans leaving their party - and it could mean creating a third party (but that would take a massive PR campaign to explain and sell the reasoning why Republicans and Democrats are joining forces).

[kenberg]

And yet many other countries do have the money for good things such as universal healthcare, a strong safety net, paid parental leave, free or inexpensive higher education, a modern infrastructure, high-speed rail lines, inexpensive high-speed internet access for all, and so on. Why do you suppose the USA lacks the money for these things?

 

Is it that

1) our country is much poorer than we like to admit, or

2) we spend way too much on ways to blow up things in other countries, or

3) we arrange to redirect the money for the good things into the pockets of a few instead of improving the lives of all?

 

In short, what's going on? A very good question, one that may be central to the 2016 election.

 

I come at this from various directions.

 

I am teaching a course this fall, someone became ill and I am filling in. The students that I see remind me of myself sixty years ago. I listen to NPR driving in. The national events being described do not remotely remind me of the world I grew up in. I find this juxtaposition disorienting. . I am working on where this leaves me philosophically.

[gwnn]

What did y'all think of the debate overall? There has been a fair bit of discussion going on online about the fact that all "mainstream media" considered Hillary as an obvious winner whilst all internet polls had Bernie Sanders winning, and usually by huge margins. I watched it out of curiosity and I think they both did a good job, although Hillary had more style and she spoke more because a lot of the other candidates kept mentioning her. The most memorable/lamest moment was the "I told them to cut it out!" which was pretty funny (of course the lamest moment was the "my dad had just died so I voted yes without knowing what it's about" but since I don't know the names of the other 3 dudes I can't name it here), and Bernie's response about Wall Street controlling Congress, although I dont know what Bernie can do about that from the White House. Well anyway, this is my uninformed/unsophisticated opinion, I meant to just ask what you thought of it.

[Fluffy]

9gag agrees with you. They also say Hilary keeps arguing that "I am a woman, there's never been a woman as president before". Apparently Bernie Sanders would be first Jew US president, bu he never says anything about that.

[kenberg]

Becky (my wife) thought that HC's weakest moment was when she was asked the most important way in which her p[residency would be different. She replied it was obvious. the most importan difference was that she was a woman. What an awful way to sum up how she differs from Obama. I like to think that she didn't mean it the way it came out.

 

I think she did herself a lot of good. I had been thinking that Dems were really accepting her as inevitable but not much liking it. I still think that is true, but less so.

 

It's a long time to go, but right now I think HC will get the nomination for lack of an effective challenger, and unless the Republicans make some serious changes in their approach she will win the election for the same reason.

 

As a president she might be ok. Maybe.

 

Overall I think the debate went well. We saw strength and weakness, and that's what a debate is for.

[gwnn]

I take it from your post (that does not even mention his name) that you don't think Bernie has any chance at all? Is this the basic premise that most people adopt, i.e., it was not about who won the debate, but how Hillary is doing, i.e., whether or not she is electable (essentially, unless she says something incredibly stupid/embarrassing, she is still more electable than the other people)? I am not asking in frustration, just trying to understand. Certainly I understand why she is considered the front-runner, and certainly I agree with dismissing the other three people (O'Malley, Chaffey, and Webb, I think.. but I could not reliably identify the three faces), and I also understand why many people dismiss a self-avowed Socialist as some sort of a whackjob or at least why many people dismiss his election chances. But I am wondering, is all of this online enthusiasm I see just bogus? Certainly him winning the debate by some 80% of voters is not a serious number and is most likely just a reflection of multiple voting and/or an over-enthusiastic base. But still, I think (wish?) something is happening.

[awm]

Elianna and I watched, and she was pretty sure Hillary won the debate. We were both planning to vote for Bernie going in so we are not really Hillary supporters. She did not like Bernie's answer on gun control in particular (hits sort of close to home because she is a teacher and they have active shooter drills periodically, as well as all the school shootings in the news).

 

The differing evaluations by the news media and polls have a lot to do with familiarity. The majority of debate viewers were not familiar with Bernie Sanders at all, so he could more or less give his stump speech and excite a fair amount of interest. The news media have heard his stump speech a zillion times, and were therefore not impressed. On stage, Hillary was much more polished and Bernie seemed old and grouchy (even though they are around the same age). The later polls (after the public had a chance to listen to news anchors tell them who won) favor Hillary as the winner -- which makes one think about the impact of news anchors on these things.

 

It will be very much an uphill battle for Bernie Sanders to win. Hillary has huge advantages with low-information voters -- she has much more money raised (her campaign is raising about the same, but her super-pac is flush with cash), she has a huge advantage in endorsements, a huge advantage in name recognition, and people have fond memories of the good economy during her husband's administration. A lot of people also want to elect the first female president (yes Bernie would be the first Jewish president, but given the religious makeup of our country this is probably more of a disadvantage).

 

In any case I thought it was interesting how different the topics being discussed were in this debate from the Republican debates. I think we used to agree on what the big issues were in our country (although never on the solutions) but clearly now we do not even have that.

[y66]

I enjoyed the debate. Clinton was in top form except for the weak reply mentioned by Becky via kenberg. No one from either party comes close to her in terms of command of the issues, esp. foreign policy, or debating technique. It was fun seeing her do so well and I hope that continues for another 12 and a half months and four or eight years after that. I think it will.

 

Sanders was in good form but not good enough to pick up any votes from Clinton supporters. I don't see how he's ever going to do that. He's got more integrity than all of the other candidates from both parties put together but yeah you do have to be able to get stuff done.

 

O'Malley scored more debate points than Webb which is not saying much. Chafee was a bust.

[kenberg]

I take it from your post (that does not even mention his name) that you don't think Bernie has any chance at all? Is this the basic premise that most people adopt, i.e., it was not about who won the debate, but how Hillary is doing, i.e., whether or not she is electable (essentially, unless she says something incredibly stupid/embarrassing, she is still more electable than the other people)? I am not asking in frustration, just trying to understand. Certainly I understand why she is considered the front-runner, and certainly I agree with dismissing the other three people (O'Malley, Chaffey, and Webb, I think.. but I could not reliably identify the three faces), and I also understand why many people dismiss a self-avowed Socialist as some sort of a whackjob or at least why many people dismiss his election chances. But I am wondering, is all of this online enthusiasm I see just bogus? Certainly him winning the debate by some 80% of voters is not a serious number and is most likely just a reflection of multiple voting and/or an over-enthusiastic base. But still, I think (wish?) something is happening.

 

I haven't looked at any poll numbers. My response should be seen as a partial response reflecting some of my own interests.

 

 

I think Bernie's main accomplishment was to present himself as a serious candidate. Where will it go? I am not sure. A few thoughts:

 

1. Hillary wishes to be president. Just about everything else takes a distant second place. Bernie is who he is, and is prepared to let people vote for him if they agree with him and vote for someone else if they do not. This latter approach is of course very attractive.

 

2. I will listen to what he has to say. I suspect I won't agree with a fair portion of it.

 

3. The Republican's are in a meltdown. The Dems are not, but I don't think any of them are particularly good. Briefly I would say:

 

Chaffee: I remember liking has father, his presentation at the debate was hopeless.

 

Webb: I think that it is very good to have him on stage. He would have fit in well in Harry Truman's Democratic Party. He is out of touch with current Democratic Party thinking, but perhaps not out of touch with the thoughts of many. He is not going to be the nominee.

 

O'Malley: He was a good governor. (I live in Maryland). The presidency is the big leagues, he is not there.

 

So we come to Clinton and Sanders.

 

Sanders: As I say, I will listen. I do not find myself saying "Yea, yea, I agree" But I will listen.

 

Clinton: Sort of Bill Clinton without personality. Bill played the sax and ate Big Macs, because he liked to (and there were other things he liked, well, let's not get into that). It's impossible to imagine Hillary doing anything or saying anything without her asking how it will help her campaign.

She could be beaten for the nomination by a strong alternative candidate, and she could be beaten in the general election by a strong Republican candidate. I don't see who this would be. .

 

I'm a retired college prof. I think it is safe to say that no political action group anywhere asks "How will this campaign slogan play with the retired college profs?" Still, people sometimes say "You don't seem like a college prof" or "You don't seem like a mathematician". I think they intend this as a compliment but at any rate it might mean that my views are shared by at least some other people. But I make no claim to having my finger on the pulse of America.

 

We shall see.

[y66]

From Bernie Sanders, the Socialist Mayor: A profile of the presidential candidate written in the 1980s, as he got his start in politics by Russell Banks:

 

His [March 1981 mayoral] election, clearly, was in many respects due to luck, flukey circumstances not likely ever to be repeated in Burlington. But it was also due to Sanders’ willingness to work long hours, day after day, week after week, knocking on doors, speaking to crowds until his voice went hoarse, shaking hands on cold, windy street corners until his right hand swelled and turned numb and, perhaps most significantly, evoking from his supporters a kind of passionate loyalty that a party machine or patronage can never generate. An ideology can generate that kind of self-sacrifice, however, and so can a remarkable personality. Sanders had both going for him. His record as a radical activist and his long association with the Liberty Union Party kept the leftist regulars out there on the hustings those cold months, knocking on doors, handing out leaflets, raising money with raffles and yard sales. But his personality brought out a commitment from many who normally regarded a politician as someone with a peculiar and slightly dangerous mental illness.

 

T. Alan Broughton remembers going along reluctantly with a group of local poets and writers who were giving a reading to raise funds for Sanders’s election. “We read our poems, and it was nice enough, sort of like a coffeehouse event from the Sixties, and then we passed the hat, and then Bernie got up to say a few words, of thanks, we figured. He started talking about how much he liked poetry, how much it had always meant to him, like we all expected him to do, and then, before we knew it, he was reading a couple of his own poems, which weren’t really all that great, but they had a passionate Beat Generation kind of intensity to them, about the poor, of course, and the evils of capitalism. Then, suddenly, there he was reciting from memory “Do Not Go Gentle”, by Dylan Thomas, reciting this rich, rolling Welchman’s poem in a heavy Brooklyn accent. And it was kind of wonderful, you know? He was loving the poem, letting us see him love it, and reading it totally unselfconsciously in this utterly inappropriate accent, and I felt then for the first time how great it would be to have a guy like that as mayor of my city.”

 

Sanders has this effect on a lot of people. His supporters and the members of his administration are called Sanderistas, originally a pejorative tag that is worn now with good-humored pride, like the T-shirts that have “Welcome to the People’s Republic of Burlington” printed on them, a slogan generated by a remark attributed to Sanders by the cartoonist Gary Trudeau in a “Doonesbury” strip run shortly after Sanders’ first election victory. Trudeau portrays Sanders as a guest on the Tom Snyder’s “Tomorrow” show. Snyder says, “Mr. Mayor, let’s be candid, okay? You’re a socialist. You’re a Jew. You’re from New York. So how the heck’d you get elected?” Sanders answers, “The people of Burlington wanted a change. They decided to send the capitalist system a clear message.”

"And it was kind of wonderful, you know? He was loving the poem, letting us see him love it, and reading it totally unselfconsciously in this utterly inappropriate accent, and I felt then for the first time how great it would be to have a guy like that as mayor of my city.”

 

I suspect that describes how a lot of Dems feel about this guy. Can Bernie Sanders win a presidential primary and a general election? In our dreams.

[Winstonm]

From Bernie Sanders, the Socialist Mayor: A profile of the presidential candidate written in the 1980s, as he got his start in politics by Russell Banks:

 

 

"And it was kind of wonderful, you know? He was loving the poem, letting us see him love it, and reading it totally unselfconsciously in this utterly inappropriate accent, and I felt then for the first time how great it would be to have a guy like that as mayor of my city.”

 

I suspect that describes how a lot of Dems feel about this guy. Can Bernie Sanders win a presidential primary and a general election? In our dreams.

 

I almost wonder if a lot of his donations are secretly coming from right-wingers like the Kochs who think he would be an easier target to defeat than Hillary.

[y66]

Not poetry fans?

 

More than the Koch Bros., I suspect Bernie is selling a lot of coffee mugs to Dems who want to feel their own inner anti-establishment burn for a few months before their capitalism and exceptionalism preserving instincts kick in (again).

 

http://i3.cpcache.com/product/1626145371/feel_the_bern_mugs.jpg?side=b&height=225&width=225

 

Hit me Sanderista barista.

[kenberg]

I can imagine the backroom discussions: Should we go after the Dylan Thomas vote or the retired math prof vote? Should we promise to fund rage against the dying of the light or research into 4-manifolds?

 

It brings to mind a discussion I had years ago with some high up operative in a campaign for governor. I wanted to talk about university funfing, he wanted to talk about how th Terps were doing (Terp is short for Terrapin, some sort of turtle, and the basis for the slogan "Fear the turtle")

[y66]

Perhaps we can all find something in this one to agree on:

 

"One Today"

 

By Richard Blanco for Barack Obama's January 2013 Inauguration

 

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,

peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces

of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth

across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.

One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story

told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

 

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning's mirrors,

each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:

pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,

fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows

begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—

bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,

on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—

to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did

for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

 

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,

the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:

equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,

the "I have a dream" we keep dreaming,

or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won't explain

the empty desks of twenty children marked absent

today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light

breathing color into stained glass windows,

life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth

onto the steps of our museums and park benches

as mothers watch children slide into the day.

 

One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk

of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat

and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills

in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands

digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands

as worn as my father's cutting sugarcane

so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

 

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains

mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it

through the day's gorgeous din of honking cabs,

buses launching down avenues, the symphony

of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,

the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

 

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,

or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open

for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,

buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días

in the language my mother taught me—in every language

spoken into one wind carrying our lives

without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

 

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed

their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked

their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:

weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report

for the boss on time, stitching another wound

or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,

or the last floor on the Freedom Tower

jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

 

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes

tired from work: some days guessing at the weather

of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love

that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother

who knew how to give, or forgiving a father

who couldn't give what you wanted.

 

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight

of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,

always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon

like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop

and every window, of one country—all of us—

facing the stars

hope—a new constellation

waiting for us to map it,

waiting for us to name it—together.

He even got something in there about equations for the math prof vote.

[Winstonm]

Perhaps we can all find something in this one to agree on:

 

 

I doubt it. :P

[mike777]

A bit off topic. In my local Sunday paper there is yet another article about our local county school district and poor performing schools. Schools that have been poor performers for decades despite multi millions poured into these specific schools. The article points out how 50 million more has been raised by private sources to help improve these schools.

 

The more I read the article the more angry I got. I noticed a picture which showed a huge modern classroom with only about 10 fifth graders in it. The caption read how the teacher was teaching the kids how to make a paper name card. Yes a name card! The article went on to talk about how the kids got trips to a very pretty park located 5 miles away and a trip to Washington DC paid for by the PTA.

 

There was basically nothing about the kids reading, writing or doing arithmetic. The schools had less than 22% of their students performing at grade level. Again these poor levels have been going on for decades at these schools. There were plenty of money, clean modern classrooms, plenty of teachers and teacher aids. The Principales complained how the kids came from poverty and high teacher turnover are the reasons for continued failures.

[kenberg]

Education is a topic very much worth discussing as we head into the 2016 elections. Here is a very depressing article from today's Washington Post. The story discusses a general problem but concetrates on one young man, Jadareous Davis. He struggled through life and through high school and after some false starts he is, perhaps, giving a course in diesel mechanics a serious try. I don't know if this will work out for him but I would like it to and I would like such training to be given far more emphasis than I see it getting. Everyone keeps talking about getting kids ready for college. Mr. Davis graduated from a very poorly rated school in a state known to be not good in education. He had his troubles getting thorugh, he graduated at age 19 with , I think, a 1.8 gpa. Maybe his kids (as near as I can tell he does not yet have any) can go to college, I think diesel mechanic would be a fine objective for him and I wish him the very best of luck. I don't mean it as an also ran, I mean it as a good job.

 

We have a mess. Some schools are doing great. My grandkids are doing fine. I mentioned I took over a class from an ill colleague and I enjoy the students greatly. But that's my life and, to dramatize a bit, my America. Some other places? They need help.

 

We need to help, and, I believe, we also need to be clear about our limitations. As a society we can and we should provide better opportunity.But Mr. Davis comes from a difficult (not really impossible but difficult) background. We cannot entirely fix that. We can help some, but if people make really bad choices then things will not go well.

 

A kid should have a decent school to go to. That much is clear to me. Beyond that, I see difficulties that I cannot solve.

[blackshoe]

I've been a diesel mechanic. It's not a bad job at all.

[kenberg]

I've been a diesel mechanic. It's not a bad job at all.

 

That's just what I would expect. I was working a good job making pretty decent money between my junior and senior year in college. Not really much of a skilled job, what I was doing, but it had possibilities and I considered chucking college and going that route. I didn't do it, but I considered it. The thing is, I was really interested in what went on in college. I had taken a summer college course in physics between my junior and senior high school years. I didn't register, I just asked if I could sit in and the prof said ok. On balance, staying in college seemed right to me so I did it. But we have all of these young people who wish to make something of themselves but are not really all that academically oriented. I think it's nuts to try to sell them all on college. Some should go, some shouldn't. The years 17-22 are crucial years. It's a time when people think for themselves and prepare for the future. If those years slip by as the person tries to be something that he has no interest in or talent for, instead of preparing for something he could do enjoyably and profitably, it is not easy to get those years back.

 

What should a young person do? That's tough. But I think diesel mechanic and college should be seen as good choices, one choice good for some, the other choice good for others. There are more than a few out there whose four years in college prepared them for nothing, and who could have used that time, and money, for something they had an interest in,.

 

Anyway, we need to give the kids a chance. Some of these high schools are dead ends.

[akwoo]

The worry is that diesel mechanic might be a job that almost doesn't exist in 30 years. It seems like one of those jobs where most of the more routine parts can be taken over by robots, leaving only jobs for master mechanics who can solve tougher problems (though I wonder how they'll get trained) and folks skilled at managing the robots. We might only need the 10-20% most skilled mechanics out of the ones we have today.

 

The folks who don't want to go to college because they don't want to be in a classroom and see other opportunities are probably okay. The ones who can't make it through college because they haven't figured out how to take in new information and use it to come up with solutions to problems not identical to ones they've seen before are the ones I worry about, because they won't make it as a master mechanic either.

 

The quality of teachers is a serious concern. Too many of our teachers are unable to do anything but regurgitate memorized information that might as well be Greek to them. The worst of them equate learning with memorizing mumbo jumbo. They are going to have trouble preparing their students to think for themselves, and they are also concentrated in the poorest schools. We can't replace them because there is no one better to replace them with.

 

I have colleagues who teach the mathematics classes required for people who want to become elementary school teachers. It is clear from all my conversations with them that anyone with less than an A in that class does not understand arithmetic, by which I mean that they may be able to carry out the standard procedure for adding or multiplying two whole numbers, but they have no idea what this procedure means or why it works, or even that the procedure has meaning. If we only allowed people with As in that class to teach elementary school, half the elementary school classrooms in the country would go empty.

[mike777]

ok ok

 

 

I guess my point was missed.

 

I am angry because these schools are not drilling students in reading, writing and arithmetic.

 

 

I grant you can drill in many ways, that is ok...but I did not see in my local article any drilling.

 

I saw two big and common blame:

1) my students are poor/pverty

2) my teachers are short term, not low level...short term

 

---

 

 

I mentioned this before ...in my mba program the few teachers in it were terrible....they just wanted to pass with the least amount of effort, they were vocal about it...to be fair

 

--

 

 

I know many years ago my Mom's paycheck was based on grad units...

[akwoo]

The problem is that drilling when not accompanied by some kind of understanding is useless.

 

I'm sure you (at least if you're in a country where pennies are still actually used) have had the experience of going to the store, seeing the register ring up $19.72, paying with a $20 bill, seeing the register show $0.28 in change, and finding 2 pennies in your pocket. You give the 2 pennies to the cashier, who now has no idea whether they now owe you $0.26, $0.30, $0.14, or $0.56.

 

Most of those cashiers, if you gave them a list of arithmetic problems to do, would probably still remember what they learned from 3rd grade and could do them quite accurately. (At least that is the case around here.) But to them, just as it was to their teachers, those problems are just meaningless hoops they have jumped through, completely disconnected from everything else, including making change for a customer.

 

If anything, the meaningless drill is counterproductive, because the students now think that they spent all those hours working on arithmetic, and therefore they know everything there is to know about it. This is particularly a problem in those mathematics classes for future elementary school teachers I just told you about, because there are a lot of students in there who think they don't need to learn anything about arithmetic, when in fact they don't understand arithmetic at all.

[helene_t]

If we only allowed people with As in that class to teach elementary school, half the elementary school classrooms in the country would go empty.

Maybe the problem is that elementary school teachers are expected to be able to teach everything. I am sure many teachers are, but there are also those who are good at teaching only some subjects.

[kenberg]

The worry is that diesel mechanic might be a job that almost doesn't exist in 30 years. It seems like one of those jobs where most of the more routine parts can be taken over by robots, leaving only jobs for master mechanics who can solve tougher problems (though I wonder how they'll get trained) and folks skilled at managing the robots. We might only need the 10-20% most skilled mechanics out of the ones we have today.

 

The folks who don't want to go to college because they don't want to be in a classroom and see other opportunities are probably okay. The ones who can't make it through college because they haven't figured out how to take in new information and use it to come up with solutions to problems not identical to ones they've seen before are the ones I worry about, because they won't make it as a master mechanic either.

 

The quality of teachers is a serious concern. Too many of our teachers are unable to do anything but regurgitate memorized information that might as well be Greek to them. The worst of them equate learning with memorizing mumbo jumbo. They are going to have trouble preparing their students to think for themselves, and they are also concentrated in the poorest schools. We can't replace them because there is no one better to replace them with.

 

I have colleagues who teach the mathematics classes required for people who want to become elementary school teachers. It is clear from all my conversations with them that anyone with less than an A in that class does not understand arithmetic, by which I mean that they may be able to carry out the standard procedure for adding or multiplying two whole numbers, but they have no idea what this procedure means or why it works, or even that the procedure has meaning. If we only allowed people with As in that class to teach elementary school, half the elementary school classrooms in the country would go empty.

 

Jobs disappear, no doubt about that.But just as someone who made a living by, say, filing tax forms for individuals can adapt when a computer program does what they used to do, a person capable of learning diesel mechanics can learn a variant skill or a new skill as that job disappears. I have to look no farther than my father to see an example. He had no interest in academics, he could not understand why I did, but he was quite capable of skilled physical work and of adapting as needed. We are having someone come out (a few someones) to give us an estimate on replacing our roof. I will not be asking whether their workers went to college.

 

 

No doubt making a living requires responding to changes, much more so than in the past. And some people can't. That's a huge problem. But sending everyone off to college is not the answer. With the young man from the article I cited, I would worry that his high school training, and his early life in general, did not give him the skills needed for success at the diesel school. He has to be able to read, and he has to cooperatge with the program. Again from NPR: They were talking about helping young people take the right path. One young woman wanted to be a nurse but had been suspended from school for fighting. There is a lot to deal with to make this work.

[billw55]

The worry is that diesel mechanic might be a job that almost doesn't exist in 30 years. It seems like one of those jobs where most of the more routine parts can be taken over by robots, leaving only jobs for master mechanics who can solve tougher problems (though I wonder how they'll get trained) and folks skilled at managing the robots. We might only need the 10-20% most skilled mechanics out of the ones we have today.

Seems like I have been hearing things like that for, well, about 30 years. I think diesel mechanic is a pretty safe job actually. I doubt the demand is going away any time soon.

 

One big problem is that the public school system is now almost entirely dedicated to sending every kid to college. That just isn't realistic. A lot of them aren't going. So a large fraction of the students at many high schools are being force-fed coursework that is useless to them. The vocational education they could actually use has been largely eliminated, and now resides more often at community colleges.