About Flagpole. (Athens, Ga.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (July 27, 2011)
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X ^ $4 COORS PITCHERS Ht DMSD4Y l SATURDAY mBp KARAOKE HtONTSDAY DART StASON S1AR1IN0 SOON! T BIKE NIOnT STOP M.50PBRS ALWAYS filler nioM Lirr cans SECURITY *12 DOMESTIC BUCKETS THURSDAY PARTY NIGHT! dance to ao*. b 90s music BCTR SPCCIATS • BCtR PONG TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVEL IT! B y the end of the 20th century, we were awash in talk of the new "knowledge economy" where a beckoning cornucopia of golden opportunities supposedly awaited those who had the appropriately sophisticated training to take advantage of them. Reality turned out to be a bit different, however, in the sense that some research and development advances not only eliminated potential new jobs due to breakthroughs in automation, but facilitated the "dumb ing down" of other processes to the point that often only a close acquaintance with the workings of a specialized piece of equip ment was required of the workers themselves. Hence, while the old theory that the key to industrial expansion was a vastly improved program of public education still got its share of lip service, its actual connection to real ity became ever more resistant to empirical verification. It's true enough that the Department of Commerce estimated last week that the higher wage "STEM" (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) jobs that are supposedly "driving our nation's innova tion and competitive ness" are projected to grow by 17 percent between 2008 and 2018. However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported some time back that nearly 60 percent of the jobs likely to be available over that same period require only varying amounts of on-the-job-training for those who will fill them. Beyond that, BLS projections show that nearly 40 percent of all these anticipated jobs paid a median wage of $21,320 in 2008, and nearly 60 percent paid less than $33,000 per year. This means that the workers who held them were in the bottom 50 percent of all earners in that year, and 90 percent of them likely did not make enough even to require them to pay income tax. If I hear one more born-on-third-base bastard complain that "half the people" don't pay any in ome tax at all. I'm going to sug gest that folks who depend on golf clubs for their calluses are welcome to sample how the "slackers" in the bottom half live anytime they choose. For starters, they might just consult the New York Times columnist Charles Blow's impressions of the "working poor" he met on a recent excursion to our neck of the woods. They are honest people who do honest work—crack-the-bones work; lift-it, chop- it, empty-it, glide-it-in-smooth work; feel-the-flames-up-close work; crawl- down-in-there work— things that no one wants to do but that someone must. ...But they're the ones less talked about—either not glamorous enough or rancorous enough. They are the ones without champions, waiting for Democrats to gather the gumption to defend the working poor with the same ferocity with which Republicans protect the filthy rich, waiting for a tomorrow that never comes. You tell 'em, Charlie! I'm so mad I can't. At least the Republicans try to serve their true constituency. For the Democrats, "work ing people" seems to apply solely to union members who already hold the best blue-collar jobs out there, while the folks who are slaving away everyday and still can't make ends meet simply don't merit their attention. Before I go careening wildly down that well-worn path again, let's return to another consideration raised by these employment pro jections, i.e., the real importance of education in contemporary America. Even we'uns stuck up here in the ivory tower have been under fire for some time now from folks who see little need for superfluous little trappings like literature and history when the real point of getting a college degree should be preparing young people for lucrative careers in infor mation systems or risk management or some similarly enticing field. First of all, this argu ment overlooks the fact that although most higher salary positions do require a minimum of a bachelor's degree, a good number of them now seem specialized enough that companies may be less concerned than they once were about applicants' undergraduate majors per se because they, too, will effectively "O.J.T." many of their new entry-leve t hires. In this scenario, the ability to master large amounts of information quickly and to communicate that mastery effec tively seems much more important now than it once did. Among humanities graduates who have found their place in the corporate world, I point with special pride to a certain history major whose interpretive and communication skills have been a major asset to his career in information security. (Good going, Son, your Mama and I are real proud, and besides, we already had plans for the spare bedroom.) It's one thing to posit the basic functional ity of education (broadly defined) even in a more specialized vocational setting, however, and another to take a stand for its intrinsic importance regardless of one's job description. Let me explain that I do not rise here to advo cate a universal end game in which absolutely everyone winds up with at least a baccalaure ate degree. While an educated person should be able (not to mention willing and eager) to absorb and interpret information effectively, it is that capacity and inclination, more so than the acquisition of the information itself, that strikes me as the real mark of being "educated." With due respect to all the long-suffering souls who saw me through my undergraduate and graduate schooling, I was probably almost as educated in terms of that ability and desire to learn when I graduated from high school in 1965 as I was when the fools gave me a PhD 10 years later. I'll grant you that I was exceedingly fortu nate in my high school experience, especially given my ultimate choice of career, but I would have been no less fortunate in other respects had I simply stepped directly onto the assembly line at a local plant. Indeed, in the latter case, I might've had even greater reason to thank my high school teachers, for while an appreciation for Shakespeare or Coleridge or Wolfe or just for the importance of ideas in general doesn't necessarily help with running a machine, it can prevent what ever we do for a living from completely defin ing who we are. James C. Cobb For the Democrats, “working people” seems to apply solely to union members who already hold the best blue-collar jobs out there... 6 FLAGPOLE.COM-JULY 27. 2011
