Where is the left?

We should be helping society plan for when we won't be here.

 

I think this time is different. We could at least be thinking about what we might do if it is different.

For every guy with an IQ of 120, there's someone else with an IQ of 80. My job as an educator was to get the people with an IQ of 80 to prepare for a life of work. It was a difficult task given the lack of support in the school system for teachers making the effort, the negative messaging of the school system to students who have limited ability, and the lack of direction by the parents of the low-ability kids.

The low IQ problem is compounded by poverty that actually produces more low IQ kids.

What will society do with these people when low-skill work is replaced by technology. Males with nothing to do tend to cause trouble.

 

We're not doing that anymore. At least not for the last two years. Their on their own.

 

Darwin says they will go away. But I believe in the triumph of the human spirit. We have a neighbor with Downe's Syndrom. She gets on a bus every day, works in some simple support role (office mail delivery?) and cares for herself.

 

There were a lot of years I was teaching school where the wind was blowing in the direction of students being told they should find an exciting career to enjoy. Me? I was preparing them to decide on how to earn a decent living, provide for their families, and not expect work was going to be a joy.

 

I'm really not sure what the best advice is on that. I think most people do not find work that is a joy to them. But I don't know if that means people should sacrifice a job they love to make more money. I guess I would tell people to have a reliable plan to make whatever is "enough" for them, but to also follow their dreams with some kind of backup if their dreams are risky or not very lucrative. I remember how my brother was really into art, and when he was a teenager my dad made him write an essay on jobs that make at least 100k as punishment for not managing money well.

 

We have too many people falling through the cracks. How come? At this point where there are still low skill jobs we're not preparing people to take them. Boys are drifting more than girls.

 

I think our first duty is to care for ourselves as best we can and contribute more to society than we take. Then we may choose to take on obligations to partners and children. If we can do all that, we can take a job that makes less money, or try for the dream job.

 

Once again, you need to be clear about exactly what you mean here. Who is 'society', in this context?

If by 'society' you mean that individuals with a long working life ahead of them need to be planning for changes, then I couldn't agree more. If you mean something else, then you need to spell out what that is, and why you think someone other than the individuals concerned, can or should be interferring. And you need to explain why you think individuals shouldn't be doing their own planning (a bizarre thing to want, unless you want to set them up for failure).

 

I took two years off to teach high school Physics. I did my best to excite my students about the subject. I would tell them to set their sights and goals as high as possible. That's the way I was taught and it worked out great.

 

Golden Years types might do more than insulate and isolate themselves in The Villages and think only about how another farthing in taxes will take away from their comfy retirements. Old folks' sense of entitlement is breathtaking.

My parents and grandparents sported me to a university education for $120.00 a year, about $1,048.72 today if you use the CPI inflation calculator and start at January 1968.

https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

Three Sundays of grocery store clerking would have paid my tuition for a year.

Why do I need to explain what I don't think? ???

 

The short version of my message to high school students was, "You will be making some of the major decisions in your life in the next dozen or so years. I'm sorry schools haven't given you more of the information you need to determine what's best for you. I'll try to remedy that when I can." Did it work out? Of course. Just from a standpoint of making theird day easier, you'd think more teachers would figure it out.

As the old teacher saw goes: "You keep them busy or they'll keep you busy." What's better than convincing them this is their time to be selfish and figure out what they need? They can look at themselves now and be ready to commit to spouses and children if they have them.

 

It's the PARENT'S responsibility to reseach the current and future job markets. Schools can help a little, but it's not their job at the end of the day. If a kid has rubbish parents who don't do any of this research, they need to do it themselves.

 

No clue what that first part was about. Didn't address my question at all.

Please explain what you DO mean when you say 'society' should be thinking about this.

 

~ Good luck if you actually believe there is an explanation that makes sense ...

 

I don't separate the world into your categories and decided to reiterate my point about old people.

We have the idiot old people waging a "war on drugs" and cheering policies that drive up the prices of homes. In the last year, home prices in Texas have gone up 20% and 30% in Florida. It's about time some of the old folks thought of someone other than themselves.

Society is all the people of these United States.

 

Why isn't it the job of the school to provide students with an education in this area? Is this area off limits for a reason?

Lemme guess... you figure teacher will brainwash kids if they talk to them about careers. Do you think teachers will turn them into social workers?

 

Nope, still makes no sense, and still doesn't address my question.

Right, INDIVIDUALS - those who make up society. Each of us need to plan ahead for a changing job market. Again, I agree with this 100%.

However if you mean something else when you say 'society', you will need to explain it a lot better than you have done - which is not at all. You keep using the word, but your use of the word seems to suggest that you mean someone or something other than the individuals who make up society. That's quite the illogical mystery!

 

Sure, schools need to provide guidance for careers and tertiary options, of course. But they can't speak for the context in which the child has been born and raised. They will discuss the same options irregardless of the material circumstances of the child. EG if the child is from a poor family, but is being 'encouraged' by a school to take out student loans for a degree which won't qualify them for anything, much less a decent enough job to repay those loans, that could fairly be called Very Bad Advice. On the contrary, a rich kid who has no need to earn a respectable salary or qualify for high demand jobs, could be 'encouraged' to do some STEM course they hate, just because their math was good.

This is why it's so important that parents do this footwork, and guide THEIR child, according to THEIR child's actual material circumstances.

 

Make sense to you.

 

'Guidance?" How about encouraging self-awareness? My job as an educator was to inform them, not guide them.

So, you want to hamstring the schools because they offer "very bad advice" for students to take out loans to get university degrees in sociology. Should I have been restrained from providing career information to my computer science students?

Maybe they "hate" STEM courses because those courses are taught poorly by unqualified instructors. Maybe you should raise the pay for STEM instructors.

Considering the public have screwed up their schools by trying to do them on the cheap, especially in many flyover states, you're right about parents needing to know what their child is being told at their cheapo neighborhood public school.

If I was still teaching, I would continue providing students with information and skills they need to make life choices like how they will provide for themselves when and if they're on their own.

Some news for you... most parents don't have the time, inclination or skills to help students get what they can get in school, if the school can do a good job.

 

What does 'self-awareness' have to do with anything? The entire process of getting educated and learning a trade which will keep you fed, is a product of self-discipline. Self-discipline is an acquired habit, which can exist in isolation from 'self-awareness'. And it can only be learned in early childhood, at home, via parental modelling. No school can teach it, if it's not already there by age 8.

The school CAN'T do what parents do, that's the point. And if parents don't have the time to do it, they shouldn't have had kids. If they lack the inclination, ditto. As for not having the skill, it doesn't require any. That's a BS cop-out. All it requires is determination.

 

Learning a trade isn't an appropriate choice for many students. Awareness of your abilities and interests is important to making the right choices for yourself.

Learning the skills you need is a product of self-discipline, but choosing which skills to learn is also important and itself a product of self-discipline.

Where did you get that idea?

People are not that brittle. I've seen them adapt and succeed.

Sometimes the school succeeds where the parents have failed. I've seen it.

Well, parents aren't all operating on your wavelength and have kids anyway. Sometimes we help the parents help their kids.

Everyone can't be a doctor.

 

~ Public schools in the USA today are busy teaching "Critical Race Theory", non-binary nonsense, homosexuality , transgenderism, the "evils" of American history & "White Supremacy " , Drag Queen shows etc. Confusion and absurdity abound in today's WOKE American society ... "

" I do not attend campus often , but when I do I always leave hating myself.
Stay angry my friend ..."​

 

If teaching has become more lucrative than cardiac surgery (average base salary >$500K/year), the education-industrial complex looks due for some squeezing, for sure.