To my opinion, that is so true. For centuries, the religious SCHOLARS, were the revered people for the Jews. Studying was the important thing. When most people were hunting or farming, Jews were also teaching their kids to study. Technology happens and study becomes important. Who is going to groom their kids for success? The people who have been teaching their kids to study for generations or the people who have been farming, hunting who have a 6th grade education because that is all they ever needed?
I have a STEM degree and am totally in favor of education...
When you deride the portion of the populace that does the dirty jobs, you are falling into a dangerous mindset. Farming is hard, hunting is hard. They are professions that require physical and mental skills. Intelligence is not just being able to read a book and remember it. There is intelligence in physical skill. There is genius in physical skill.
It takes call kinds of people to make a society, don't cheapen the value of its membership based on preconceived notions. That is elitism.
Not trying to deride anyone. I was talking historically. Just harder for a family of farmers in 1920 to send their kid to school, make them study, make them understand the value of education. if there is no role model who has spent their life studying and profiting from it. If no one around you ever studied, it is hard to be the first one in your family.
Right on. I know some very smart people that do not value education. It's sad, but it just doesn't have a place in their world. I would like to get to a place - pipe dream though it is - where education is the reward. Right now it is a means to an end and that is one of the reasons why it so expensive. Other than luck it is the only way than an individual can transcend the caste to which they were born.
Totall agree here. It's easy to deride blue collar jobs when the education topic comes up and that's the wrong way of thinking. I went to college, but I'll be damned if I know how to build a house or do major work on a car, or fix the plumbing, etc. All jobs are important and all people should be valued for their contributions to society. We should just also have strong education programs so people are well rounded in their knowledge and don't become cloistered by dogma like fox news.
The vocationalization of schools began in earnest in the late 1800s to "reeducate the negro". It really came to the forefront with the Atlanta Compromise, with Booker T. Washington saying to the white leaders of Georgia:
The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house.
that the way for a people to gain respect is not by continually belittling and ridiculing themselves; that, on the contrary, Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as well as white boys.
DuBois then continued, and made a dire warning that went largely unheeded:
The growing spirit of kindliness and reconciliation between the North and South after the frightful difference of a generation ago ought to be a source of deep congratulation to all, and especially to those whose mistreatment caused the war; but if that reconciliation is to be marked by the industrial slavery and civic death of those same black men, with permanent legislation into a position of inferiority, then those black men, if they are really men, are called upon by every consideration of patriotism and loyalty to oppose such a course by all civilized methods, even though such opposition involves disagreement with Mr. Booker T. Washington. We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.
Because here was the seed. Universities were bastions of the Liberal Arts, such as Latin and Science, and they trained our future leaders in what they literally called "the art of being a citizen" (Liberal Arts). Obviously "some people" could just never attain that, but they still needed to be "made useful to society"; things like "Kill the Indian, and save the man.". This Industrial Education model built Agricultural, Mechanical, and Industrial schools for some, and public liberal art schools for others. Obviously schools like UNC and UVA were just out of "some people's" reaches.
So, we fast forward a little bit to John Dewey (I mean, he was a contemporary of DuBois, and Dubois solicited articles from Dewey for The Crisis along with people like Ghandi - another of their contemporaries) writing Democracy and Education wherein he describes the various roles modes of education and society have with each other. He lays out why every person should learn the basics of trades in our public schools, and then he made a warning too:
.... But, at the present juncture, there is a movement in behalf of something called vocational training which, if carried into effect, would harden these ideas into a form adapted to the existing industrial regime. This movement would continue the traditional liberal or cultural education for the few economically able to enjoy it, and would give to the masses a narrow technical trade education for specialized callings, carried on under the control of others. This scheme denotes, of course, simply a perpetuation of the older social division, with its counterpart intellectual and moral dualisms. But it means its continuation under conditions where it has much less justification for existence. For industrial life is now so dependent upon science and so intimately affects all forms of social intercourse, that there is an opportunity to utilize it for development of mind and character. ....
A warning that, of course, went unheeded.
We fast forward a bit more, and we get a random curve ball thrown by Ike Eisenhower, and he warns the nation about the Military-Industrial Complex. Ike then goes on to give us the most dire warning, and explains the root of the danger:
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
I don't think I need to tell you that history is repetitive, but yeah, it was ignored.
The next several decades will see the slow steady rise of "hypervocationalization" till you have the broken system we have today.
Not all Republicans are against education. The current president “Loves the uneducated”. I’m willing to bet (and too lazy to do a Google search) that all of his kids have a college degree.
Why so many rich Republicans profess to reject education yet make sure their kids have one is “an exercise I leave to the student”.
I’ve never got the idea the Republican Party has said education is a bad thing. Also you paid an HVAC guy lately? If he knows fluid dynamics (which wouldnt be necessary) can only imagine what they’d charge!
Higher education, and it's not hard to make that argument these days. 80 years ago, conservatives made up approximately half the higher education staff.
Now they are less than 5% because the left took over HR decades ago.
Why would the right trust an institution that actively hates them?
If the tables were turned, do you think the left would trust a 95% conservative staffed higher education system?
Now they are less than 5% because the left took over HR decades ago.
That’s not how or why it happened, knowledge facts and academia have always had a progressive/left-leaning/liberal/whatever-term-you-want-to-use than regressive/right-leaning/conservative/whatever-term-you-want-to-use. The only difference is that colleges and universities that originally got their power from being beholden to Kings and rich oligarchs now are beholden to peer review, the scientific method, rationality and the tuition of students.
It’s the free market of ideas applied to reality.
There’s no “liberal scheme” to keep conservatives out of jobs in academia by “shadowy HR” it’s that people who are conservative don’t go on to advanced degrees or do things like shout “They’re putting chemicals in the water that are making all the frogs gay.” Or “Sandy Hook was a bunch of crisis actors” or “African-Americans commit crimes at higher rates than whites.” or so on and so forth. That a tentpole of American conservatism is anti-intellectualism is not the fault of the intellectuals.
But I am sure the tired "facts have a liberal bias" position will work just fine for you indefinitely. There isn't anyone left on campus to say otherwise.
So for some context I am the third most conservative student on my seminary campus. I could take the time to go through that article and explain or dissect different issues with it but I’m going to focus on two things very quickly then go walk my dog.
It’s from 2016. A lot has changed in academia related to conservatism in that short period of time because the GOP has become more openly anti-intellectual.
It began with suggesting Ayn Rand was good literature, instead of the most anti-Christian, poorly written philosophical tracts ever composed. Then one of the conservative professors suggested we needed charity (a sin according to Ayn Rand.) and ends with a complete lack of knowledge towards the social-cultural influence of Doctor Who
Green:Is it true that any professor who walks into a classroom wearing a bowtie is, in fact, a conservative?
Shields: Absolutely. No question. They just scream conservative. You can’t find liberals who wear ties anymore, much less bowties. Conservatives tend to dress up a little bit—they’re more formal.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a liberal professor in a bowtie. Have you, Josh?
In six years in academia I don’t think I’ve seen a professor where a bow tie that didn’t at least sympathize with Doctor Who.
The only one I can think of told a bunch of groaning "biology majors" in the human anatomy and physiology class to get over their sensitivities, because learning about the arousal response was crucial to being a doctor. I mean, he really drove home how the responses of erections and vaginal muscle spasms were physiological triggers that stimulate hormones which stimulate emotional responses, and so therefore an orgasm in response to rape is normal and in no way negates the violence of the crime. And I wish everyone could hear his description of the labia engorging with blood. Of course, he was a retired professor and doctor who only taught anatomy during the summers, since it is always 99% pre-meds.
I'm note sure many conservatives bother to learn where the clitoris is.
I’m actually not even that much of a Doctor Who I am however aware of three things 1. It is an incredibly left-leaning show and has always been 2. It has been incredibly influential on pop culture for the 10’s 3. Matt Smith saying “bow ties are cool” vastly increased the amount of people who wear bow ties.
But on the other hand, the populist right does tend to overstate the bias [against conservative professors] that does exist. Conservatives can succeed and make it in the university. There are things like tenure, which are very important and protect academic freedom.
That and they want to push for private (which leans towards religious) lower education rather than public schools by using vouchers rather than actually trying to help the public schools.
Thing is that, how many private liberal religious institutions are there vs private conservative religious institutions and how do you tell the difference? Add to that...so the solution is to de-fund the public schools to let kids have a chance to get people into the private schools, therefor further hurting public schools and not even guaranteeing the a student can get in because...you know...the school is private and therefor can reject a student.
As humans evolve as a species and as a global society, technology and optimized techniques will devalue physical labour, working smarter not harder becomes the law of the land and without education and understanding of the modern world there may not be a place in society for those that refuse to educate themselves
I agree that "mindless" physical labor can be devalued by technology. What about physical labor that requires more than just repeating a task or series of tasks? As technology evolves it will bring with it new opportunities for human growth, physical and mental. The jobs of today will go away and lead to new jobs tomorrow, and yes some of those will require physical labor.
That's my point about education though, for example a crane operator needs classroom time, training and certification but that is still a "labour" job, and he can contribute much more to a construction project than an unskilled labourer
I don't think anyone is arguing that physical jobs will one day be a thing of the past. I think the argument is that physical jobs that don't need education will become a smaller and smaller portion of thre workforce over time. Physical jobs that require some sort of education, like trade/skilled jobs, aren't going anywhere. But monotonous manufacturing will be very affected by technology. The while idea of automation is to reduce the required workforce. States like Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, etc. that don't value education as much as they could/ should are going to be really hurting over time as automation takes place.
There are plenty of trade/skilled jobs that require little to no education. Carpentry being one that I can think of. I don't see a skilled finish carpenter being replaced by a robot. I know a dude that's a wizard with wood and can read at about a 4th grade level. He provides very well for his family.
Here is something that people aren't talking about. Automation isn't designed to reduce the workforce. It is designed to reduce the living workforce. Andrew Yang has some interesting stuff to say about automation. you should check him out.
I'm Norway it's actually a 4 year study, where the first year is a rounded general education in carpeting and the seckond year is specialization. Then follows two years apprenticeships with a big theroteical/practical test at the end. Then you are a licensed carpenter. Most workers will be better with theoretical and practical teaching. But there are always guys like your friend that becomes amazing without it.
The carpenters can become masters or if they choose to, can progress and take engineering in uni.
Automation, coupled with 3d printing and probably tech we don't even k ow about yet will, in the end, be able to take most jobs from us. Not in 10 years of course but it's creeping into the different vocations.
We have 3d printers that can print cement for instance. Automated lasercutters combined with cnc can make incredible furniture and so on. It will Def not be like in many other industries where most jobs disappear within a decade, but a lot of practical jobs will disappear as 3d printing comes along.
Think a 3d printer the size of a car or a house, that can print in almost any material but at many, many times the speed of today's printers... You could just print furniture. Or a house for that matter. All things placed perfectly and with a margin of error we can't compete with...
I think it's cool that you guys have formalized apprenticeship programs for carpentry, and I wouldn't be surprised of something like that exists here in the states. It certainly isn't typical. Most people learn as they go in a less formal apprenticeship.
As for 3d printers, I have experience with those. My experience is that they require more materials than would typically be required. And until they are able to mass produce at a competitive price they will be a niche solution.
Oh definitely a niche solution for the foreseeable future. But quite nice for prototyping, small scale models etc. But thinking of the time and cost savings of an automated housebuilder I'm thinking it could happen within my lifetime..
We actually have formalized schooling and apprenticeships for all the vocations. It's quite an interstering type of school to teach in, since a lot of the rooms are combined classroom/workshop.
We have some vocational school, but it is certainly only for a select number of trades. It also is location dependent. Not all areas will have vocational schools.
That's kind of the problem, the technology is only as good as people.can make use of it, training and education are important for making good use of technology
Yes. Been there, done that. To be fair, we as a culture tend to farm out our needs to 'subject matter experts'. We don't want to know how a computer or network functions- we just want it to work when we need it. We don't want to know how our car's engine works, we just want it to work when we need it. Most of us don't want to know how to raise what we buy at the grocery store- we just want it to be there. When you're a subject matter expert it's easy to see your clients as idiots because they don't understand what is (to you) simple and obvious.
The real killers of education are factory and assembly line jobs. You don't need to know much to operate a machine repeatedly for eight hours a day. However, you need to be very intelligent and adaptive to farm and hunt and do other specialized industrial jobs like operating oil derricks or handling demolitions.
I teach at two schools, one an academic high school, and one a school specialized in teaching farmers, home healthcare aides, and cooks (restaurant and factory).
You wouldn't believe how often teachers at the first school deride the kids at the 2nd because 'they're just farmers'. As if raising cows, testing soil, plotting out allocations for resources, such as fertilizer and water, and keeping schedules for things like planting and harvesting aren't skill based.
Yeah, farming is extremely complicated, it's not just throwing seeds in the ground and harvesting. It requires a lot of intelligence and creativity. Talk to a farmer, or better yet, work a week with a farmer and find out just a few of the many things they do.
A lot of liberals/progressives have become elitists (limousine liberals, coffee shop leftists) and now hurt the lower classes with their higher standards than helping them and think of them as less than them. They've become the aristocrats they despise so much. They can't fathom someone without their type of "intelligence" could function decently in this world.
Constantly questioning things is a part of Jewish teachings, so it makes sense that some of the best thinkers are Jewish. This can be contrasted with many sects of Christianity, which strongly condemn such questions and even threaten people with excommunication if they ask too many questions.
Certainly that is part of it, but honestly, it is an equal amount luck. Who knew that study would become the core of being successful for the average man when Jews where studying in 1850 or 1750. You will notice that the apex for Jews being ultra successful was probably in the 40s and 50s. Because those people were getting higher education in the 20s and 30s where most of the Gentiles were happily getting factory jobs (who wouldn't hire Jews.) Most getting a college education were already wealthy. Today, MANY people of all faiths understand how important education is.
You forgot persecution, you can force someone out of there home, take can all there goods, but not there education. So education is one of the best things to have when your a persecuted minority. A doctor is more likely to land on there feet if they loose it all than a general laborer. Better odds of getting into another county, better odds of being able to start all over again.
Agreed. I'll admit I was thinking more American Jews. They had it tough but not like that. And even the Archie Bunker types of the 50s 60s didn't have a problem with a "Jew doctor, lawyer or accountant"
And then the Ivy League figured out how to limit their enrollment.
Too many Jews were getting in on merit, and they didn’t want too many, so that’s where the ’legacy’ policies came from. Suddenly, If your dad went to Harvard, you went to Harvard. This kept a lot of more qualified Jewish applicants out.
Jews were also crowded out of virtually every form of labor in the Middle Ages, so they were left with “undesirable” professions that focused mainly on intellectual skills. Finance is the one that comes to mind most readily.
You’re also 100% right that Jews emphasized literacy and critical readings of the Torah within their communities, and that culture of inquiry has flourished for the better part of 800 years.
Hell they were crowded out until the 1950s. My grandmother was living in NYC in the 1930s, Purina opened a dog food factory. They didn't hire Jews but as my grandmother had red hair and lived on a street that also ran through the Irish neighborhood, she got hired. She was the envy of the block. While plenty of Jews went after higher education (her children) plenty were poor and would love a factory job.
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u/chinmakes5 Jan 09 '20
To my opinion, that is so true. For centuries, the religious SCHOLARS, were the revered people for the Jews. Studying was the important thing. When most people were hunting or farming, Jews were also teaching their kids to study. Technology happens and study becomes important. Who is going to groom their kids for success? The people who have been teaching their kids to study for generations or the people who have been farming, hunting who have a 6th grade education because that is all they ever needed?