'Middle-Skill' Workers In Hot Demand

ok healthcare, that's pretty much all over. Now transportation? With all the trouble with the states fiscal problems that's also also all over with most of the states. I think I'll refraim my excitement.

very good comment, why does the people of this nation think that it's the employer's responsibility the hire then train it's employee's which bring on that theses jobs are civil servant or government opening.

GA, and one of the best discourses I have read in a long while.

Personally, I cringe at hiring some of the candidates, even up to 50 years old.

As to the schools, yes we MUST alter the curriculum, eliminate "fun" courses, do away with standardization, and glory be, quit concentrating so much on athletics.

Oh, and I just read this:

10 Industries That Will Shed Jobs in 2011

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-Industries-That-Will-Shed-usnews-3891085082.html?x=0

AS someone who was brought up in skilled trades at the beginning of my career and then seeking higher degrees of education. I feel I can comment quite well on the current status of education here in the USA.

For more then 40 years I have work in maintenance and engineering trades in large steel & iron producing facilities through out the USA. Having as many as 130 Skilled trades people reporting to me. I have had more then my share of highly qualified employees. But, as with most things times have changed, mainly due to all of our ages.

Trying to hire a couple of skilled trades people just the other day brought my level of frustration to its peak. We don't have skilled trades any more. We are not teaching what one would need to have to even come close to what was expected when I applied so many years ago.

One of my-grandsons had a class on animal behaviour in high school. Of course I had to say something that pissed my better half off, but none the less. What the hell good is that class! Now that's one example of many, where our schools waste our money teaching crap.

So when, are we, in the USA, going to take back our schools and politics. We need to be a little bit more "penny wise and not so pound foolish".

How many of you here in the states even know who is on your local school boards? Have you even gone to one of their meetings? Do you even know when and where they meet? I would bet that not many of you can answer one of these questions.

1st step in correcting a problem is to get involved.

20 or so years ago, I thought about running for school board in my school district. What a lesson I learned. The schools boards are stacked with teachers who work in other school districts. A convenient way around the rule about no teachers from the district serving. Of course your kin can teach in the district you oversee. Thankfully, here in PA, our new governor is taking a hard line on the waste in the school system. I agree, the trade portion of public education needs strengthened, the athletics need cut way back, and the "crazy courses" need eliminated.

same here in Wisconsin. Too bad the actual change here is being drummed out by the union cuts. Too bad the members don't realize the path they are currently traveling has been traveled upon by the private sector starting ......... 20 years ago. And now they are just feeling it, and they feel that it's unfair to them.

So true, and I so remember their arrogance, disdain, and non-concern for the workers who were downsized around Pittsburgh.

What goes around, comes around, it is said.

you have made a perfect example of part of the problem that keeps us from "take back our schools and politics". You through your discourse have menetioned "skilled trades", the difference between your definition appears to imply similarity with that of the turn of the 20th century, not a more modern definition such as the OP used in which skilled refers to those with higher education of a bachelors and above. You appear to believe that a veterinary technician isn't as skilled as say a steel worker, but the truth is typically the opposite steel workers have and typically need minimal educational skills or knowledge (brawn over brains) and vet techs need some minimal education in the anatomy and physiology of animals. I believe the issue is that what is skilled in modern society has shifted those minimally skilled endeavors that previously had ben skilled 100 years ago into a classification of unskilled or subskilled. I do agree schools need to focus more on those educational factors that promote the advancement of humanity in the long run, typical science, math, engineering, language and (non-recent) history need to be a core focus. However, for those not going into skilled professions, e.g. Doctors, Engineers and Scientists, maybe they should be exposed to some coursework in highly paid semi skilled professional support fields. Bear in mind a X-Ray technician typically earns more then a general practicioner MD, for less labor and far less responsibility.

Ever try to make quality steel???

It all comes down to the guy or gal on the floor.

The "college hand" usually has no clue today.

I get garbage pawned off because the Black Belt and accountant agree that it all fits in the warm and fuzzy ISO documentation.

Any farmer in my younger days could out vet a vet technician hands down, and I suspect most small farmers still could. Look at the Amish and Mennonites.

You can't base an economy on vet tech type jobs, we need to make quality goods, and if there are no highly skilled tradesman to cleanup messes and catastrophes the vet tech and IT guy can't work.

I just did an essay on common sense after seeing it dumbed down by the education system we now have in place.

And there you are making my pouint about perception, every unskilled laborer considers their field as more highly skilled than some field of more skilled labor. If you were a farm laborer, you would argue for the value of farm labor, a house cleaner the value of housecleaning, house wives, etc...

Only in unioinzed countries do you see the guy on the floor "fixing" messes. Surprisingly some countries such as Japan have replaced 9 out of 10 of such workers with autmated robotic systems and actually reduce the incidence of failures. Cabinetry used to be a skilled labor just over 25 years ago. I know a small company bought an automated system, they laid off all 25 of their shop labor with just the three brothers and father now working in the shop they produce more cabinets, have a higher degree of flexibility in production and produce them to greatly more exacting specifications than they could previously. They think it is amazing that cabinets can be made to that level of quality and precision so far above what they could previously achieve with human labor at what they figured was 10 times the rate that all their crews could do before. Their investment for all improvement was just under $100,000, about 2 employees years pay. I suspect that those cabinet makers would claim they were a highly skilled labor force, and they were 30 years ago. Such categories differentiating between labor groups is not a fixed point, but rather a moving point in time ass our knowledge base and technologies advance. Some labor considered skilled 50 years ago may now be considered unskilled labor (or in the software industry maybe just 10 years ago).

It then comes down to the OP's definition of 'Middle-Skill' Workers In Hot Demand'.

And then on top of that, having to train them? I take that as more than acclimated to the needs. Maybe the need is actually a higher skill level workers needed.

Exactly, the OP has defined middle skilled workers as those with more thn a high school degree, but less than a Bacchelors degree. These would include such AA degrees as Dental hygienest and Xray technicians, both of which are paid extremely well for minimal skill or repsonsibility relative to the Doctors they work with. Certain types of electricians are in high demand, mostly those with higher than simple commerical or residential training. Those wih specialized training for municipal works and such where electrical control suystems are utilized. (of course the downside is that their is no distinction in terminology betwen a skilled electrician and one who does simple commercial or residential work.) however, most electricians doing specialized electical works for switch gear, highpower and control systems have some degree of associate level education (if not a AA as a electical technician). the problem here as indicated is that maybe the need is actually for higher skilled personnel, but that the education it takes (time and money) isn't justified for most people given the liabilities, reponsibilities, and pay scale for the positions that can be retained, in comparison to middle skill level positions. And companies see these skillset as filling th gap for the highly skilled labor force, without having to increase the compensation rates to make the effort required to attain such highly skilled position appear worthwhile (and it puts some competition at the day to day mundane labors level agaisnt those of higher skills to keep the cost of labor down across the board for such positions).

As I posted earlier, I'll refrain my excitement

Ok, you mentioned a mom and pop shop.

How does that relate to steel making?

So, back to that, who repairs the robots and machines when they go down for mechanical reasons?

And a robot or automated system is only as good as the programmer and the software used, which can and has been corrupted in visits I have made to vendors.

Very near to me is a company, Elliott Turbomachinery, which is owned by EBARA, a Japanese firm. Most of it is highly automated today, BUT, some levels of control during factory acceptance tests has to still be done manually, as the automated systems only recognize set parameters, not fluctuations.

And, in large automated pipe mills, hydrostatic testing is preferred to be done manually to maintain a steady pressure. Again, something automation could never recognize.

How do you know the pressure is steady if you can not measure it with a machine. If it can be measured you can develop a mechnism to maintain or operate within a measurable tolerance, which can be substantially better than humans can do simply because the response can be more rapid and more frequent and much more precise. As long as the process is a relatively consistent routine. the problm is not that a machine can not do it, it is that a machine can not do it more cost effectively currently, and that is the example of a mom and pos store where usually automation is too expensive to replace labor (or in many larger industries in the US where Unions mandate the use of labor union in favor of automation no matter the cost), larger factories are design for mass production which vastly favor the use of automation from a perspective of cost effectiveness. As time goes by you will see more of the mundane repetitive activities can be performed more rapidly and efficiently by automation, and the automated systems will be maintained by a more developed and highly skilled labor force comprised of fewer people. There was a time when a house wife was the only person who rally could vacuum a house, the complexities of each different house were problematic to something like automation, now it is cost effective to have this function automated in homes.

C'mon guys. Arguing about the meaning of the word "skill" probably has a place in the legislature where they would try and sort out the wording of laws written by special interest lobbyists.

But the most meaningful measure of skill is the amount someone will pay to compensate a worker for its application in his/her efforts. While its a bit of a stretch even "life" skills can be roughly measured by the costs an individual endures when such skills in himself are insufficient.

Education is about the building of skills in people. A good education consists of building those skills that will be most valuable in the future world of the student. Skills in an individual are not discrete unrelated entities. They build on each other some, like language and best ways to relate to other people are deep in the foundation of anyone's set of skills.

The problem in our education system is basically that we are not building the right skill sets both in quality and quantity in our young people for the future. Part of this is because of our own cultural tendency to treat the present as more important than the future (I believe prosperity and our belief systems have a lot to do with that; but those are separate issues.) But another part is we have a distorted view of our future born of what our politicians and media claim lies ahead of us.

They have long predicted an "information revolution" to match the 19th century Industrial Revolution and have generally inferred that our society will consist of people trained essentially to push buttons and thereby create wealth by controlling the labors and resources of the entire world and then consuming the profits ourselves. The unstated presumption here is that we as a people (Western civilization, whatever that is) have some kind of power to essentially reduce the rest of the world into a willing servitude.

Well, that hasn't happened and for all practical purposes won't. We need to stop training people to be managers of wealth creation by the tools of some technical revolution. As if we could hoard those tools for our own use, which surprisingly to some we are not very good at. We can have a few such managers and sure enough, they will keep it all for themselves. Stop a moment and examine the current stew of American politics and ask yourself how many billionaire Wall Street bond traders are sitting in jail. What about everyone else?

We need as a society to take a hard look at what the next few decades of life in the United States is going to actually be and then reshape the education curriculum to provide young people with the right set of skills which in each individual case are matched to the students talents. We're certainly not doing that now and I think most will agree with me.

What we ought to be talking about here is which skills to teach that will form a practical structure of skills for each student; i.e. curriculum. Not whose skills are real and whose are not. Remember, the most valuable skills you have are the ones you put to work to a purpose that you deem has value.

Ed Weldon

What we ought to be talking about here is which skills to teach that will form a practical structure of skills for each student; i.e. curriculum.

Not a bad start for a new thread, Ed. Suggestion....

"the most meaningful measure of skill is the amount someone will pay to compensate a worker for its application in his/her efforts"

So Real Estate Agent is a extremely highly skilled position by your own definition and Physicist is an unskilled position. Is compensation just a measure of skill or also compunded with the capability to employ flexible ethics to the employers advantage which the employers compensates for those willing to work in that manner and take on the risk on his behalf. Consider how much the CEO of Lehman Brothers was compensated.

RCE - We're arguing semantics here. High, medium and low are adjectives with broad meanings. It's fun to argue which occupation or individual is higher on the skill ladder. Each of us has his own (usually biased toward his own situation) assessment of the level of skills born of a combination of talent, personal resources, education, opportunity and experience.

These factors count a lot if you are comparing people in one narrow occupational field or measuring the culturally important attributes of numbers of different people against each other. But poorly defined words used to describe factors which are inherently numerical do not help much with real world situations and the judgments we must make in conducting our lives.

About ethics. It is certainly a skill (hard to quantify) applicable to most of our work, and not just the work of "highly skilled " or highly compensated workers. Even in the work of burger flippers and retail clerks there are numerous opportunities for shortcuts where a person's ethical sense or right and wrong takes over when it is obvious that a shortcut that is wrong will never be noticed.

Interestingly enough it is in the supposedly "highly skilled" occupations where the employer or customer allows the greatest latitude of action trusting the ethics of the "employee". And it is in many of these situations that we see, and indeed are seeing today in our news broadcasts, the results of ethical lapses in such trusted people and the societal damage they can produce. (Think Libya and likely the Japanese catastrophe)

Ed Weldon (Nothing personal here; this is just a good lively debate......)

Hi fixitorelse, We have had the same problem for a good few years over here in the UK, but in this country they get round the problem by inviting skilled people from Poland and any other EU country, this has now left us with a vast army of unemployed people from between 16 and 25 years of age, and it costs the British state a fortune in dole money!

At the same time, our infrasructure is not able to cope with the mass of European workers who come here, hospitals are at breaking point, housing is extremely difficult to find, and all food and fuel prices have rocketed, thus making it extremely difficult for many people in Britain, especially our pensioners, all this because of the folly of our politicians who couldn't see it coming, or so they say!

Xanasax

Same issue here in some of the areas around the rust belt. I also have hired out of country to get the skill levels needed to maintain new equipment. Give me a good Polish machine repairman any day.

Over the 40 years I have trained close to 20 or so millwrights. Not many places even have training programs around here anymore (not cost effective). But, I believe we are wrong in doing this. If we do not invest in the people to make and or repair the equipment to manufacture goods, we're in deep @*

How do we do this. Lets not argue the point but brain storm a way to get it done. Seems there is allot of good people on this forum that know there is an issue. Maybe from a bit different perspective and diversity is good.

It is all the EU. That is like people in California complaining because people come in from Arizona and work cheaper. FYI, our states have more differences in their labor laws than most European countries.

Many students at college level have an idea that if they get a degree they will become rich. High school kids want to be superstars in anything and win alot of money. People have first to understand passion. Passion for creation of things. Bringing things to life. I believe that´s what is missing. Oh, and another thing. I still feel teachers in any area should be required to have experience in their field (have worked with metal if he or she is to teach shop), so he or she may explain how things really work and prove it.

This is an excellent point. This is actually required of University professors in order to obtain tenured positions. Professors in civil engineering have to be lincesed PEs which requires at minimum 2 years experince after college. All University professors in the science and engineering have to have worked in the industry at some point. In addition they must maintain their research activitie which require application and obtaining funding from private industry and governmen for projects. These project, in order to be funded must be of some definable utility to the industry of agency funding them (except to a lesser degree the NSF). Frequently, universities set up non-profit organizations such as research institutes through which the universities do research on behalf of funding private interests or governemental agencies. Thus professors must have a workign knowledge of the industries. In addition, Professors are educated int he fields they teach, not in teaching as a field in and of itself. You can not be a professor of chemistry with out a dgree in chemistry.

All of this is not true of our primary and secondary educational system. Teachers at those levels can have degrees that have nothing to do with the subject they teach, and many have degrees in subject like liberal studies (which in many universities is another word for teaching degree). We even have special dumbed down science course for those planning to teach secondary sciences, rather than requiring they obtain a science degree. soem colleges actually offer two different sets of degrees for those seeking to be more proficient in sciences and planning to be teachers they offer BA degrees (not certified by ACS or APS), and full BS degrees for those pursuing careers or higher degrees of education in science. There is a double standard for teachers versus real qualified people who practice in these fields. One has to understand the work well, another just has to know it exist and someone else is knowledgable about such subject. Unfortunately, the latter happens to be a large percentage of public school teachers. (Many private school prefer to hire those with Masters degrees in the subject they are going to teach.)

A funny story actually, I was in a Quantitative Analaysis chemistry course one quarter, and needed a astronomy requirement still befor graduation. Some friends and I got to class early a few times and noticed that the Class before our Junior level chemistry class was full of attractive women (obviously a junior level chemistry course would not be full and typically have a much higher male to female ratio). The teacher was the dean of the Physics department, who I knew (my school only had about 60 physic majors and 250 chemistry/biochemistry majors, so eveyone knew everyone else by junior year). One day I asked him about the class and he mentioned it was an astronomy course on the solar system. Obviously I was interested in taking it. Him informed me that I would not be allowed to take the course because I was over qualified and it was meant for teaching majors planning to teach high school science. It was for their concentration, but I would be over qualified for it to apply to my general ed requirement because I was Chem.. I asked him, "If you are going to teach science shouldn't you be knowledgable in science", and he laughed , agreed with me and then informed me that the science departments had no real input into such decisions as the curriculum requirements for liberal studies majors and it was not the opinion of the department responsible.

Of note on this topic, there was a time about a decade ago when the State of California wanted to review and receive recommendations science education in the State. The put out a RFP, apparently actually tailored for a teachers union specifal interst group. Accidentally however, i guess they receive two proposals, one fromt he Teachers union interst group, and one from a group comprises of scientists, including professors from Cal and other major science research universities (including something like 12 noble laureates in chemistry and physics) university. Many of the people in the second group had been science advisors to presidents, presidents of universities, one was Glenn Seaborg. The first group proposed that science education be made less rigorous and friendlier to those who might otherwise be left behind by placing less emphasis on the math , equations, mechanics and taxonomic systems. The actually scientist proposal indicated thatapproach to science education should be more rigorous and focused more on a strong scientific foundation of knowledge. In this first round the State selection committee composed of teachers and union politicians, as expected, selected the first group. A big fight developed when this hit the newspapers. Teh first group actually accused the noble laureates of not stepping foot in a class room or knowing anything about science education. At any rate, in the end the governor had a mess on his hands, the teachers wanted the less rigorous (and less demandin on teachers) concept, and the public became aware and favored the scientists. He made a new group comprised mostly of the first with a few key member from the second as a peace offering to the public. But the concept for the long term educational model that got approved through Wilson's office for Science in California went general towards what the tachers union group had proposed, at the apparent strong dissatifaction of Seaborg and a few others (it was more politically favorable). And now they claim that nearly 2/3 of students in California entering universities have to take remedial coursework in sicence and amthematics to catch up to the mandatory level to take coursework required for just general education graduation requirements (except teachering majors of course because they frequently have an exemption for that level of mathematics and science which other majors must fulfill).

The school system has removed passion from the classrooms by slotting and categorizing all the students in the "no child left behind" mold. The kid with passion and thirst to learn is dumbed down to meet the level of the norm and sometimes, I even think the teacher. I teach my 10 year old grandson quite a bit and he searches for more knowledge between playing sports and gaming. His teacher has given him after-school detention for asking questions out of the "rote" curriculum. The kid loved it though, got his homework done before going home. I think the little smarta*s does it deliberately.

qaqcpipeman -- The rote curriculum stuff makes me grind my teeth. When I'm not screaming opposition.

"No Child Left Behind" is a misnomer. True, they don't get left behind. They get dragged along in the race to grab one of the brass rings learning, albeit poorly, the ring grabbing tricks. The trouble is that in the few years after high school 3 out of 4 of them find out that the brass ring was never really in reach and all they would get is their first iron chain link.

Somehow we have to put the humanity back in our schools and start focusing on the individual students. There is this unspoken idea that the only useful purpose of the schools is to manufacture and sort standardized product for multinational corporations and their wealthy service consuming owners. It is bankrupt and has to stop.

It's time to pay attention to individual students and forget about the statistics that are slanted to make the whole somehow look better to benefit managers who have no idea what they are doing and don't want to know because the whole thing is such a miserable expensive failure. These kids are individuals. If they don't get algebra then accept that and what it means to their future education and career. They can still be happy and productive citizens without ever passing algebra.

Or they can be miserable unemployable twenty somethings looking for nothing except the next move in their video game or dose of some chemical.

Schools should not be like factories with giant machines whose purpose is to grind children into a standardized sludge to nourish the benevolent robber barons of profitable enterprise.

Schools should be like a garden full of plants each pampered with its own ideal growing conditions and each allowed to show off its individual miracle of life. Some will be roses and tulips. Some will be beans and peas. We need both; but we need the beans and peas more. Some will be weeds. Best we call them wildflowers and make the best of them we can. Which also means keeping them away from the criminal justice system and criminal training institutions.

Is it time for change? I think so........... Ed Weldon

Ed, so true and I scream almost everyday. Allow me to discipline without worrying about hurting feelings or scarring a child's emotions, give me the weed to train, and we will have a heirloom wildflower. I think the weeds are the bright ones that the schools want to put on Ritalin. and, ya now, that d**n algebra, I still don't have the hang of it and understand the necessity. The advanced maths are a bit easier for me, probably because they have a true purpose and I just keep rebelling at algebra.

I have preached change for 20 years and I see it get worse year by year. Now we have cyber schools, which are pumping out a different brand of failure.

I firmly believe that public schools should continue because of the peer interfacing & communication, but the teaching methods and courses need to be severely changed.

Schools that segregate or the cyber schools do other sorts of harm to the child.

I am thinking about sending my grandsons out to Folsom to be with their grandmother and I believe the new and different culture will benefit them so much.

It's time to pay attention to individual students

THAT sounds like the parents responsibility

phoenix -- You're right. It is the parents' responsibility. But it is going to take a big culture change in the US to get a lot of parents to pick up on that responsibility. Rather I propose that we make the teachers more efficient by automating the group teaching activity so the teacher can spent more time in individual attention to the students. We have inexpensively reproducible electronic technology to do that as well as add major efficiency to the process of monitoring and evaluating student progress.

Let's say a teacher has 480 minutes in an 8 hour workday. Assume 1/4 of that time is spent in "overhead" not directly dealing with students. That leaves 360 minutes for the students. If the teacher has 36 students that is 10 minutes attention per day. In primary grades there is no avoiding the teacher having to deal with groups rather than individuals. That would cut down on the individual attention time.

But as the students approach and enter secondary school and the teaching methods would become increasingly automated both the teaching and the progress evaluation will be picked up by the machines. So the teachers have more time for individual students. Or if the population chooses to go cheaper then the teacher can cover a larger class of secondary school students.

I keep hearing that "cyber" teaching will produce students who cannot interact with others. This is nonsense and at best reflects our own educational perceptions and experience. But if you hadn't noticed, the social interactions of kids all the way down into the primary grades have changed hugely since cell phones, wireless connectivity, Facebook and twitter came along. What makes you think they won't cooperate on everything including study groups if they need to? There will be plenty of human interaction and social development. This will actually have a good side since it will motivate educational system development to implement systems that will evaluate student progress by evaluating every day's study work on a micro basis since what we now call cheating will become positive educational interaction. Further, the analysis of peer interactions will tell a lot about the relative achievement level of any group member. I've said this before, but we have a model in CR-4 that can tell us a lot of how this all might work.

The need for dreary and stressful traditional formal tests will mostly disappear. Even work deadlines will take on a different character. Students will try to meet deadlines to the extent that they desire to maintain the advantages, such as they may be, to keep up with their study group or seek a different more compatible study group. It remains to be seen, however, how well systems will be able to manage constructive groupings of students and avoid destructive trends. Yes, this is social engineering. But isn't that what all formal education is?

As the student progresses through her education there will be numerous opportunities to direct her in an individual program. Guidance will be literally an everyday occurrence. For a change that guidance can rely on a large amount of real data on the student's aptitudes, achievements, talents and preferences rather than a single "page" of data, anecdotal observations and the human biases of a few people.

If we worry about privacy of this huge database educators keep on each student take heart. We keep medical records private , don't we? Why couldn't the mature student have complete control over who saw which of his/her educational records? And another great part of this is that the job applicant will be able to present (if he wants) a large database of his capabilities to the prospective employer whereby there should be better matches of hired employees to the actual jobs.

Does the system development sound like an impossible task? Well, a billion or two can buy a lot of programming. And we are a lot further along on software that analyses the meaning of human speech than you may think.

Ed Weldon

You go boy

I see the same model

The group/team aspects in education, will need to catch up with the technology

Life is & always has been an open book test

you still need to understand the big picture, to know which part of the book to look in for the answers

It is much easier to generate & gather huge amounts of information

As with a project in the "real" world the result is important, but it's easier to track the progress & get a project [childs education] back on track.

Let's say a teacher has 480 minutes in an 8 hour workday. Assume 1/4 of that time is spent in "overhead" not directly dealing with students. That leaves 360 minutes for the students. If the teacher has 36 students that is 10 minutes attention per day.

I realize your using that as an example, but the problem lies here, The educational system tries to quanify and quantify teaching the students so they can put a number on it. When at times all it takes is a slight interaction with the teacher.

40 years ago as a student with his first car. had problems starting it to go home, and would not start. Didn't know what to do, the shop was open and wanted to use the phone to call home. the instructor asked whats wrong and told me to push it in.

He took the time and went through my car methodacally, on his own time, and whistle as he did it. Turned out it was a plugged filter line. took about 1/2 hour - 45 minutes to fix.

I happened to have about 5 bucks on me and offered it to him, which he declined with a smile.

What did he teach me on problem solving? Being patience and methodically with a good attitude makes working alot easier, to this day I remember it, and him. And it served me well.

Phoenix - I see your frustration. Turning students into a faceless beans that are easy to count and measure is a symptom of the advanced stages of the disease. It is like a fever in a case of the flu, one of body's last defense mechanisms to fight a disease after the first line immune system responses fail.

Bean counter management is one of the last ditch solutions in any enterprise that has gotten so complex that other management tools no longer work. Like the fever, which can kill in excess and must be treated, the management process in of an enterprise must give way to political forms of management as the only remaining way to keep it living and breathing.

So it is with education in the USA. We have made the process so complex that it became difficult to manage. Because it was a public enterprise from the start it was subject to the wrath of the voters any time it failed to satisfy its customers.

We have continued to load new missions on our public schools in part due to changes in our culture. Material support of the schools did not keep pace with the mission creep. Management of the process became more difficult giving rise to abundant anecdotes of "waste, fraud, and abuse and outright corruption.

So it was inevitable that ever higher levels of government were forced into the act of education management. While this brought new resources, money and perceived management expertise it also brought complexity. Thus political processes to solve the problems management could not solve. And politician debate participants who lack understanding of the education process.

My previously stated plea is to put technology based efficiencies in place so the human resources for the education enterprise have more bandwidth to manage and perhaps even show leadership down to the individual student level. This will require short term investment that can produce visible improvement in student performance especially if it can be done quickly on a pilot basis.

The ultimate goal is to greatly reduce the resources needed for management, especially the multiple levels of bureaucracy, and return the "classroom" teacher to the leadership role that is the essence of great education. To the extent that the classroom teacher must manage the class rather than teach and motivate the student an essential part of teaching is lost. And to the extent that added layers of management are required the primary teaching process gets starved for resources.

Ed Weldon…….

The great advantage of any grouping of people is the ability to cooperate, so called power in numbers. It starts with leadership. When leadership fails there is management. When management fails all that is left is politics. And as we have learned, human politics is a time consuming control process with little signal clarity that best be invoked only when absolutely necessary.

I believe the anecdote to managing schools is a good one. However, you may want to consdir the problems with schools really isn't parallel to new missions to satisfy the mass of voters, or clients. Rather it is the attempts to educate everyone no matter the case, capture larger market base outside of existing base. We have spent way to much effort trying to ameliorate every special interst group by adding histories regarding their own interests, arts programs oriented to their interests, etc.. some history is relevent and of long term importance, some is not. I addition in some cases the history being taught is strongly biased and revised to fit certain political interests. It excludes the discussions of which group actually initiated the movements that had historical consequence, and just addresses those whose significance is that they represented a special interest group that is key today. A good example of that is Cesar Chavez in california, he didn't start the farm workers movement, and actually came into the game late, the philipino farm worker started the movement and were striking when chavez jumped on the band wagon. However, they are typically brushed aside in any discussion of the local farm labor movement. It is not the revisionist history that some special intersts groups want to hear about.

Shouldn't the entire focus of education be reassessed?

what do the jobs look like today, compared to in the past

what skills are required?

what kind of education makes well rounded people?

the present education system is rooted in agriculture, taking the summer off is a relic of this.

we need to think about these issues

maybe the present system can be modified...

if you were doing training in a work environment, what method would you use?

Actually most primary schools in California converted to year around education during the last decade and then about 4 years ago started converting back because it was not as cost efficient for the school districts. Until they figure out a better system to employ teachers, such as converting them to a yearly salary with out so much allowable downtime. Many teachers want their summers off, and their christmas breaks, and every holiday, and the last friday of the month off. The cost for working year around apparently get very expensive for school district due in large part to labor costs. And primary and secondary school teacher know absolutely nothing about agriculture or the related schedule, they just like the schedule they perceived the job would require them to work, such that is has become strongly engrained in the union. All they know is that when it is nice and sunny outside they want to drive over to the beach during the day. so how do you change that work ethic, so they can try to negotiate year around school schedules that are cost effective?

Garthh -- "Shouldn't the entire focus of education be reassessed?"

YES. Looks like you and I are on the same page. I'm not sure we represent the thinking of a majority quite yet. Too many have this simplistic American dream thing rattling around in their heads. (I use the word "rattling" advisedly). They love the taste of that algebra flavored Koolaid they've been talked into drinking.

Again I'll drag out my favorite "whipping boy" the Multinational Corporate Oligarchy (MNCO). We will never get our federal government out of their grip as long as our First Amendment conveys to them the same freedom of speech we guarantee to individuals. And I don't see that happening. (That's another subject full of debate potential inasmuch as populism hasn't had a good historical record by economic measures).

I hope the MNCO finally comes to grip with the fact that conveying true economic opportunity to the whole population is in their best interests lest they be faced with a loss of personal and material security. The MNCO will then get behind the idea of education for living rather than education to create their own private selection pool of "best and brightest", whatever they think that means. That may even be happening now as the MNCO starts to view the USA more as a market and less as a resource for anything beyond raw materials.

Funny how the governments of advanced nations remain so much under the influence of agricultural interests. I don't know enough about the government setup in France and Japan, two good examples of agricultural interest influence. In the USA the big corporate farm enterprises have it easy gaining control of states with relatively small populations. I don't think it is that way in Japan or France, but my thinking is based on very limited knowledge.

Ed Weldon

It's worse than just the free speech aspect

money should not equal free speech

Corporations should be able to limit liability, but this should not mean corporate personhood

as you say this is unlikely to change

RCE makes good points about how the present system is set up & operates

I call Bullshyt on the notion that using educational facilities year round is less efficient

who cares how the teachers feel, or what they want

history is littered with industries & workers that felt like things would always be the same, any one want to buy a Studebaker buckboard?

no idea if there too many or too few teachers

I think we can all agree that there are far to many administrators

the organizations are stuck in the past, adding layer after layer of bureaucracy, instead of actually improving

Garth,

I agree. I have said for years that money should not equal free speech. I don't even think corporations should be able to contribute to politicians. Politicians should only respond to voters, thus only voters should contribute to their campaigns.

It isn't that we care how teachers feel, but rather how two of the most powerful unions in the nation feel, the two teachers unions. Bear in mind to run for president and have a chance of winning, at least on the democratic ticket, you must have the support of those two specific unions. They are that influential. And, teachers union represent the status quo working towards the old union concept of getting more workers working fewer hours for higher pay. Since there is no real concern about school budgets, not like there is in private industry, it just becomes a paperwork shuffling issue. Hide the expenses now, so someone else bears the burden later.

As far as year around schololing being less efficient, that is what the school boards are indicating. To reduce their budgets, because of the loss of revenue from development, in smaller communities they are moving away from year around school schedules now that they have them in place. From what I have heard in the news it has to do with wages and the union agreements in part.

First of all, I would like to thank everyone for the discussion input. You have all shared quite a bit of thought and I hope we all had our views broadened on this subject.

Has anyone else read this article?

Germany A Rare Model Of Recovery In Global Recession

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/24/germany-economic-recovery-recession-lessons_n_692534.html

It gave me a lot of food for thought this morning.

Qaqcpipeman -- I read the article in your link below with much interest. Many thanks. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/24/germany-economic-recovery-recession-lessons_n_692534.html

Here's another article that gives additional insight into the German economy:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/how-do-other-nations-bala_b_628157.html

Germany has a culture pretty different from ours. If you like that level of structure and control I guess the benefits look pretty good. I can see where it came from looking at the pre-1848 history of Europe where a greatly divided Germany was surrounded by aggressive monarchies. I think it was a matter of join together and build strength or be consumed. Cooperation was the answer. And that gave rise to a strong leadership culture. So there was Bismarck, the Kaiser and then Hitler pushing military strength and conquest which turned out to be a poor answer. In the last 60 years they chose economic strength; let someone else take care of (and pay for) the military stuff, to build what they have today. The order and structure of their economy is not so different from the products they build and sell. And it is certainly helped by the cultural unity of the country and its leadership class.

But it is noteworthy that both articles describe the good of the German economy and make little mention of any problems. So those essays should be approached with some critical appraisal. For example nothing is said in either about the social problems related to immigration of lower skilled people from eastern nations like Turkey to fill low level jobs. As much of the world is learning the hard way this approach creates wealth in the ruling classes but undermines future cooperation. And note that in the USA where competition rather than cooperation is the norm immigration has a different effect. Also noteworthy is that in the USA's periods of worst crisis the ruling class was strong enough to force cooperation of weak underclasses.

I do not see how the USA could easily adopt the German approach. It would require way too much culture change. I personally would hate the rules and restrictions. But there are basic economic lessons to be learned from them. Perhaps the most important is their vibrant middle class, a necessary component for national consensus.

The United States has a culture built over almost 300 years based on exploitation of enormous human and natural resources as quickly and profitably as possible. This process peaked in the late 19^th century. Eventually in the 20^th century we grew some respect for our human resources; but the zeal for profit and wealth creation stayed much the same. We have now turned capitalism into a deity of sorts and we fixate over the statistical winners. Competition is the American way. "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing". If you don't have the "stats" we encourage you to borrow and buy them so you can live in an illusion of winning. Our favorite recreations center around the winning of something.

I think the difference that stands out here is German culture based on cooperation. The same national cooperation characterized Japan of 25 years ago before their drift into economic stagnation. (which I think is due to too much cooperative spirit that tolerates corruption.) On the other hand the history of the USA has been one of internal competition except for the two times of genuinely severe national crisis, our own Revolution and WWII.

So we can learn from Germany, but emulating their approach seems very unlikely in the short run.

Ed Weldon

Ed, I have read the cons also, and if I remember correctly, a lot of our early education was based on the Prussian or German system of repetition. It did me well and I am sure you are a product of this method also. Instant gratification would make the system hard to implement today, as we both agree. Being of Southern European stock and having a German step-grandfather as my father figure and strongest influence as a youth, I learned a lot about not saying "I can't do it". That phrase was just not in Pap's vocabulary. Even working with German owned firms as an expeditor or an inspector, the attention to detail is much greater than US firms. Liebert, Emerson, and a few others come to mind.

I really think you should spend some time and research the actual history of Germany, instead of depending on the Huffington Post. Germany is a state built through competition, down to a City state level. A truly Centralized National government in Germany is only about half the age of the US, and came about through force of arms, a series of wars between Prussia and Austria for control of the multitude of German duchies, principalities, cities, and autonomous institutions. The western Low States and cities had been in the business of business for a millenia, while the eastern and southern states had been in a conditon of continual warfare with Italians they were trying to extend control over, or Poles, Lithuanians, Czechs, Serbs, etc.. All the Hohenzollerns did was forcibly re-unite a major portion of the general area of the German Kingdom under Prussian rule as they competed for dominations of their neighbors. There are still vast differences in the culture of the Prussian areas of Germany, and those of western germany. Only recently has it become united again. They are favored by a national singular identitiy that the US could not have because we are not a homogeneous society that views the other ethnic groups solely as a imported cheap labor source. In the US we have many different cultures that feed into our government directly, not through threat of violence against the "ruling" ethnic group.

RCE - Thank you for the short and excellent history lesson made all the more so by a good collection of words useful in further internet research.

We ought to remember that the 19th century was still a time when human history was still dominated by warfare. I think the important part in the case of Germany is that they learned to cooperate in recent generations even if the motivation was a cultural trait of rote learning and "You must do it; you don't have a choice." It's been proven time and again that self discipline is the root of true happiness. I suspect any animal trainer will agree with that at least for some of the species. (Another interesting separate topic: Do cats exhibit self discipline?)

Seems to me that the "Rote learning, you must do it" is an essential part of training for many trade as well as living skills that do not have an obvious component of inspiration to the student. Too much latitude for picking education that is of interest to the student will result in an unbalance of skill sets needed for any culture. There have to be elements of other individual needs, often unrecognized in the well fed teenager, that enter into the education curriculum.

Ed Weldon

Actually for all the Principalities and Cities in Germany you can trace pretty much continuous warfare between them and their neighbors, against the Emperor (or King of the Germans) since just a few generations after Charlemagne, around the 10th century. Even in recent generations East Germany and West Germany were strongly polar opposites with a fairly strong animosity towards each other that often sucked the Russians and Americans into psuedo conflicts. Even in the 11th century you could see the western lowland developing strong business orientations, while a feudal society prevailed in the eastern and southern regions. The Prussians were very strongly feudal in their societies holding on to class standings based strongly in landed aristocracy even after WWI. While those areas near lower Saxony and the Rhine were more oriented to industrializations and more modernized in their societies. Only since the 1990s has Germany become more of a unified society, but there are still some conflicts between the conservative social nature of the east, which is still catching up to the west. However, that societal nature in western Germany is to be less structured and disciplined than the old principles of the German military driven societies of the 19th and early 20th century. Germany is a much more socialized country now, with inheritable class standing meaning less than it once did. It is also becoming more heterogenous with an influx of immigrants coming to work as cheap labor, and along with the influx of immigrants comes many other concerns that the US has already had to learn to try and address. Germany still has some growing pains coming that we, and the British, already experienced a few decades ago. There is nothing to really indicate Germans currently are a more disciplined society than americans, americans just like to perceive them in the light of WWI and WWII perceptions. I will guarantee you on average Germans work less than americans, and the productivity of Germany in GNP is less. Per capita they take more vacations and time off work, and are less inclined to work more/harder to improve their own lives.

Ed and RCE, do not all of these arguments about tribal and clannish warfare sound like the early USA? Remember, the English, Austrians, Germans, whatever originated in the same areas and the monarchs of England have Prussian roots. Even the root of the English language is German.

I would contend, that only the influx of Southern and Eastern Hemisphere peoples has tempered the austere way of looking at things.

I also disagree that Germany will be facing what we have already faced, History constantly repeats itself and all of this occurred in previous centuries. An old Empire like Germany is ahead of the US on so many curves, including immigration.

Thanks to both of you for the polite debate.