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The Chronicle discusses recent books on the differences betweeen boys and girls.
I nominate The New York Times' Gift Guide for the most ridiculous gift guide of 2009. I mean I really need a block of Himalayan salt.
Is college right for everyone? With the push to get more kids in college, there is now a backlash, especially among faculty that are faced with a student body that is more interested in keggers than Kant. Interesting essay and book review by George Leef. (Thanks to Macaroni)
Apt. 11d 
Huh. All these years I’ve been grating one of my slab of himalayan sea salt onto green salads and using another one in the tub. I would have never known I was supposed to be cooking on it w/o that gift guide, so I guess it was worth something.
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Personally, I found the article from George Leef the opposite of interesting.
1. The first half was repetitions of “people say college is good, and more college is better, what could be wrong with that?” That’s your intro, not eight out of 20 paragraphs before you actually get to “what’s wrong with that?”
2. Repeated favorable references to Charles Murray without noting that he was “that Bell Curve Guy” who you may have some moral problems with.
3. After summarizing the evidence that college is good, he criticizes people for not “engag[ing] with the considerable body of work arguing that we have already oversold higher education.” What is that evidence? Well, the “contention isn’t easy to prove. It doesn’t lend itself to quantification.” What could these evil social scientists be thinking, ignoring Charles Murray and his the unquantified innuendo brigade?
4. But there are sure a lot of anecdotes about college kids liking beer and giving low ratings to hard teachers. And this is different from past generations how?
File this one under “It’s cool to be contrarian, no matter what you are being contrarian about.”
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To say nothing of the fact that a BA or BS (or even the fact of some college) is a credential that future employers will look at. Not going to college, on the theory that you can learn just as well anywhere, is very costly in terms of lifetime earnings. Is Leef ignorant of that differential, or is he working on closing the door to opportunity?
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“Not going to college, on the theory that you can learn just as well anywhere, is very costly in terms of lifetime earnings.”
But college is just plain costly for marginal students, particularly for those who don’t graduate. Carrying around that kind of debt closes a lot of doors. I listen to a lot of hard-luck financial radio, and many callers with very marginal incomes have student loans, or student debt that is absurd in proportion to their professions (like $80,000 in student loans for a $40,000 a year social worker).
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Hey, I’ve seen that slab of sea salt in the Sur La Table catalog and wanted it. Isn’t it beautiful? And, can’t I buy it, as long as I don’t buy any really expensive shoes? It’s only $40.
But, I think Pogue is off on his recommendation of the Canon SX1 (which has, as its claim to fame, a cmos sensor, like the big guys & the capability for making HD movies). The consensus among the photo nerds is that it is a failed experiment, lacking the picture quality to justify its price.
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The Infallible Wikipedia (citing Van Doren, Carl. Benjamin Franklin. (1938). Penguin reprint 1991.) says, “He then worked for his father for a time and at 12 he became an apprentice to his brother James, a printer, who taught Ben the printing trade. When Ben was 15, James created The New-England Courant, the first truly independent newspaper in the colonies. When denied the chance to write a letter to the paper for publication, Franklin invented the pseudonym of “Mrs. Silence Dogood,” who was ostensibly a middle-aged widow. Her letters were published, and became a subject of conversation around town. Neither James nor the Courant’s readers were aware of the ruse, and James was unhappy with Ben when he discovered the popular correspondent was his younger brother. Franklin left his apprenticeship without permission, and in so doing became a fugitive.”
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Aw shoot, that was supposed to go in the other thread. And I’m not even commenting under the influence. Maybe that’s the problem. Be right back.
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Himalayan salt NOT Himalayan SEA salt.
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Ha! Thanks, S.
Doug, Fistful of Euros is on the NYT blogroll. Sweet!
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I read something awhile ago where the commentator noted that one of the requirements for applying to college should be that you have at least once in your lifetime read a book for fun which wasn’t required for school. Amazing what a significant proportion of the college applicants that would knock out.
I know a huge number of people who went to college who do not currently read a newspaper, keep up with current events or read for pleasure. And yes, I wonder why they wasted the money on going to college. I think that people who have no innate love of learning would be better off at trade school.
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Amy makes a good point about debt. Which is why when I am King, state schools will be cheap enough that you can work your way through college.
Unless and until employers become more open to hiring people without college degrees (or college experience) for jobs that provide a reasonably sound income, directing people away from college will be another means of erecting class barriers. In fact, this recession is likely sending a fair number of people off to graduate or professional education, so that for many positions, the entry ticket will not be merely a Bachelor’s degree.
It wouldn’t hurt, I think, to be a little more precise when talking about “college”. (In addition to considering people who only discover their love of learning once released from the confines of high school.) Lots and lots of degrees in fields I know very little about would appear, at first glance, to be clear preparation to enter a specific profession, or at the very least a general professional area. I’m thinking things like criminal justice, engineering (in all its hues), pharmacy, teaching, nursing, even business; heck, probably even divinity in some places. That’s a really different experience from a small, liberal-arts college, which is what I would most associate with needing an innate love of learning. But people with SLAC degrees are very much the minority; privileging that at the only proper college experience would not be correct.
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NYT blogroll, w00t! But, um, where is it? I couldn’t find the durn thing.
And when did their front page get to be such a mess? Time for a redesign?
(But that block of salt does look really nifty. Cooking on a condiment, how fun is that? (I’ll just try not to think of the children in the salt mines, as I saw in Indiana Jones II (Actually, I try to forget that that movie has any scenes after the departure from Shanghai.)))
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I think that people who have no innate love of learning would be better off at trade school.
It’s a popular stereotype that tradespeople do not “love learning” (or are not “book-smart”), but it simply isn’t true. Folks enter the trades for the same reason they enter any other profession (*gasp!* yes, I used the hallowed term profession to describe blue-collar work!)—talent, interest, opportunity, pay/benefits, family history, etc. I entered the electrical trade because I felt it provided more opportunity than college would, and because I felt I wouldn’t adjust well to an office-type environment (not to mention how stultifyingly boring that would be).
I’ve been an electrician for over twenty years. Even when I entered the apprenticeship, you had to have one of three things in your background to get in—some college, some time in military service, or previous experience in the nonunion side of the trade. The days of kids fresh out of high school getting an apprenticeship are pretty much over. JATCs (apprenticeship committees) look for candidates who stand out from the crowd, and who’ve shown some real interest and ambition in their lives. Y’know, just like college admissions. It costs a lot to train an apprentice, and since we (the union and the contractors who compose the JATC) are bearing that cost (rather than the apprentice—apprentices just buy their books and tools), we want people who are serious about learning, and serious about staying.
I lurk here occasionally, having found the blog through feministe. I’m not part of the demographic here, so most of the time when I see something that makes me roll my eyes, I let it pass—-but the stereotype of the dumb construction worker really does grate on my last nerve. I can tell you that folks in the IBEW probably read more than the U.S. population in general, and it’s pretty common to see folks catching up on their reading at the break table.
Really. We’re not so different. We’re just respected a lot less, is all.
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Thanks, La Lubu, for giving your perspective on this subject. Sometimes I throw out controversial links without commentary and let the readers go at it. This is one topic that could have used a longer post.
I actually really love debate. So, when you see something that makes your eyes roll, tell us. It keeps everyone on their toes.
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Doug, check it out.
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I certainly want a smart electrician and a smart plumber!
A group of my relatives in the NW are cooking up a scheme to build several tourist cabins (yes, in this economy). Materials are cheap right now and they like the idea of having their money in something they can see right down the road, rather than in, say, GM. My dad’s the veteran of many such projects and I think he’s really going to enjoy this (if the permitting process works out). It’s not just a question of hammering stuff together. It’s more like assembling a very complicated 3D puzzle.
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La Lubu raises an interesting point about class-ism here. How many of the regulars here would be pleased if their children became electricians or plumbers?
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I would be, Wendy. I just want my kids to have the opportunity to chose between being a plumber or being a teacher. Actually, I think both of my kids would be very happy having a job that involved spatial and fine motor skills. Just as long as they have steady work with benefits.
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“…steady work with benefits.”
That is the problem–construction work is famously boom and bust.
If I had to make some sort of prediction or steer my kids in a particular direction, I can imagine my son as a priest or a doctor (although his colorblindness may cause some difficulties with the latter). My daughter is rather good at spatial stuff and math (very strong features in my family), so I can imagine her as an architect, cabinet maker, kitchen designer, etc. Being an electrician is not at all out of the question, but there might not be a strong enough aesthetic component for her. But of course, she’s just 7.
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La Labu — indeed, we all really like to hear from perspectives outside our demographic. I fit the demographic here in a lot of ways, but not all, and I think many of us would say the same about ourselves. And, it’s when our perspective is not parroting the demographic that I find the comments most interesting.
I try very hard not make decision about what would make me happy about my childrens’ choices (and, fight a lot of people in order to maintain that neutrality for them).
We’ve seen an older child go through the discussion with his extended family about whether to aim to be a doctor or a paramedic. In some senses, that’s like Laura’s plumber v teacher, and the argument is that some paths are more flexible than others. But, I don’t think that’s really true. In aiming to be a doctor you do really impair your chances of being a paramedic. At the very least, you’ll have spent a lot of money and time preparing for one thing, only to have to re-train. The switch to paramedic (say, after college) might be easier, than to switch to doctoring after getting the paramedic degree. But both have significant opportunity costs (especially when you add student loans).
PS: and yes, right now, my daughter (8) says she wants to be a presidential historian because she likes learning things about people like Ben Franklin (even though he wasn’t actually a president). We were recently pleased to hear an NPR report and discover that indeed there are “presidential historians” (probably not very many, though).
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“We were recently pleased to hear an NPR report and discover that indeed there are “presidential historians” (probably not very many, though).”
There’s a new presidential library every 4-8 years, so it does sound like a growth industry.
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The computer industry still hires people without a college degree, especially for help desk/break and fix. Although it’s true those same folks often need to go back and finish the degree to move into management ranks.
It always grates on my nerves when I see certain professions (invariably ill-paid) elevated in the media as every kid’s dream job. How about the current BlackBerry ad that features an architect, a clothing designer, and a street dancer? (The tagline is “Do what you love.” So you can’t love it if it’s not overtly “artistic”?) To channel Mike Rowe’s TED talk, that’s just idiotic. Has anyone talked to an architect lately? These are people who have actively closed doors in their lives by accruing too much debt. Their salaries do not cover the cost of their education. And their positions are boom and bust just like construction workers. (I would argue that the average electrician who does repair instead of construction is much less cyclical.)
Meanwhile I sat in yet another meeting today at work where we bemoaned our inability to sponsor H1B visas, as we can’t find any programmers for our current data warehouse opening. Yes, today. Even in this economy there are shortages of the right skills. It’s ridiculous.
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“Has anyone talked to an architect lately?”
Now that you mention it, a cousin of mine got an architecture degree or two, discovered that the structural engineers are the people that make the real money, did another degree in structural engineering, got married at some point, got a job, bought a house, then got laid off a couple months after the house purchase. He’s been out of work for some months, but his parents are well off and I don’t believe he has any student loans. His brother is a freshly-minted engineer working on on nuclear waste and at least right now has a much brighter outlook.
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Talk of the nation has a discussion on the necessity of college :
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120700162
Two amazing callers, on the two sides:
“I owned my own construction business and retired last year, and the guys in Germany had a five-year apprenticeship program in tile that it took me 20 years to learn, and they were excellent.
And I wanted to go to Spain, but I was – my knees, you know, I’m 66 now, so – but I really wanted to go to Spain to one of the schools they have to learn some of the techniques they learn. But I really appreciate guys in the trades that were so skilled that when they opened up their tools, it was like a surgical kit when they did, like, spiral staircases. ”
and, the long haul trucker, who thinks his english composition degree gave him the “courage of his convictions” to take risks and start his own business.
“Well, I think more than anything, you learn, in a liberal arts education setting, about these ideas, you know, these big ideas such as wealth and power and morality. And you take those out of the classroom into the world, and I think you start to realize how you fit into the grand scheme of things a lot better than if you, say, had just come out of high school and went into that same world, unprepared, I guess.”
I don’t know what I think. But, I’m happy that long haul trucker got to go to college in the United States. And, I wish the tiler had a chance to go to the apprentice ship in Spain (or that we had the same thing).
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Thanks everyone, for understanding that I wasn’t trying to just start an argument. Frankly, the trades are an isolated world, and if a person doesn’t have a personal connection to tradeswork, chances are good that person doesn’t know how the trades operate. There aren’t very many cultural representations of us, and most of our work is done behind closed doors and fences.
For example: (I would argue that the average electrician who does repair instead of construction is much less cyclical.)
That’s not how our classifications are. My ticket is “journeyman wireman”. Colloquially, we sometimes call ourselves “Inside” (as opposed to “Outside”—which refers to Line Construction—the folks who work on transmission and distribution lines overhead or underground). JWs (or “jaydubs”) work on everything from the service drop down. It’s not a “structurally inside” vs. outside, it’s not a voltage classification, it’s not “construction vs. maintenance”—it’s….just from the service drop on in. Once it leaves the grid, it’s ours. 😉
So, at any given time, a JW can be working on construction, remodel or maintenance. In commercial, institutional, industrial—or even residential settings (in some Locals. We do have a Residential classification that takes fewer years to “top out” (“graduate”), but some Locals are so strong that there is no pay differential. I ran a service truck in one Local where that was true, and my work was split up evenly between residential and commercial).
Electricians tend to do better at working steady than other trades because our work isn’t so dependent on the season. But in this crappy economy? Bah. Everyone is out of work. (Not me, right now. Cross fingers, throw salt, knock on wood.) It’s really bad across the nation.
That’s the rub—there will be a lot of baby boomers retiring, and theoretically, there is a shortage of skilled labor. Realistically, will the jobs be there in the future, or are we in for a long haul of a depression? (yes, I used the word “depression”. You would too, if you lived in the dregs of the rust belt. Trust me, it’s a depression here. 😉
We have a hard time attracting young people to the trades. There is still the legacy of racism, sexism, and who’s-your-daddy to deal with. There’s the boom and bust cycle of the economy. There the fact that manufacturing has for all intents and purposes left the U.S., which means that when there is work, it tends to be located in larger cities that are unaffordable for tradespeople (who have to budget for boom-and-bust) to live in. The impact of boom-and-bust on families (because that affects your benefits too).
Don’t get me wrong—I still think entering the trades was one of the smartest things I ever did. But…that choice was made against a backdrop of (realistically) few other choices. For me, it was the best choice. Would I encourage my daughter in it? Hmm, I guess I would…if she really wanted it….but I’m…somewhat glad (and somewhat disappointed) that she doesn’t. Glad, because she’ll avoid many of the struggles I’ve had to endure. Disappointed, because the trades is the only world I know—all I can do is cheer her on from afar in any other venue. I can’t “help”. I don’t have connections, inside knowledge, or “clout” anywhere else. And that can make a big difference.
I think education is underrated, rather than overrated. It’s a damn shame that electricians (in my area) earn $70,000 a year after topping out, where elementary schoolteachers earn less than $40,000 when they start out.
One of the things I’ve noticed influencing the choices young people make about a career is a certain….class segregation. I don’t really know how else to put it. When I was growing up, there was more exposure to different socioeconomic groups than there is today. The child of a plumber might attend the same public school as the child of a physician, and that isn’t something I see happening now (either at my daughter’s school—which is a Title I urban school) or in schools that I’ve worked in as an electrician (doing remodel or maintenance work). The demographics are as tightly strictured as say, satellite radio stations. I think it has an effect on the minds of children—what they see as being possible, or what they perceive as being interesting/worth exploring.
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La Lubu, you would probably really like this Michael Crawford book. We talked about it a little bit here, but there were much bigger discussions elsewhere in the blogosphere. Crawford drops out of academia and opens a motorcycle shop, after working as an electrician in grad school. He talks about how rewarding the trades are, and how it’s too bad that we’re not training kids to work with their hands. It was a good read.
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Funny you should mention that; it’s on my list of things to look for at Barnes and Noble (easily my biggest vice!). I’m currently reading “The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker” by Mike Rose.
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Thanks for the link, Laura!
And thanks also for the background, La Lubu. The guys I did construction with were non-union; it’s interesting to hear how things work in other places.
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