Bill wrote
> STW has had some interesting effects.....There seemed to be some real
promise >for kids to learn something that would help them get good jobs
without a college
>degree, something that is out of reach of many.
I see both an upside and a downside to this. The possible downer is:
what happens if the jobs these kids are being trained for then become
obsolete, or the company moves away, etc. Are they being given enough
general skills to be able to retrain for other jobs? As an old-timer I
am appalled at the way the educational ante has been upped continuously
over the last thirty years. It's now practically impossible to get a
decent job without at least a two-year college degree, and those who
can't afford it or have academic problems are just out of luck.
The upside is: the situation just described in the last sentence is in
main part a result of the public school system (particularly here in
progressive New York City) being badly managed, underfunded and seemingly
dedicated (to use a very appropriate Yiddish idiom) to "driving
poor/minority students out of the world." ANYTHING which will make the
school system accountable to some outsider with reasonable standards of
literacy, numeracy, etc. is going to improve the outcome for the current
mass of students being turned out of the high schools as functional
illiterates. At the very least, corporate consultants might decide they
don't want their workforce to come in with latent TB infections, and thus
get the furnaces and windows fixed, the rats out of the classrooms, etc.
The system in New York works on a very simple principle: children of
color and children of the poor are expendable. (Not to mention adults in
those categories.)
Getting the powers-that-be to improve things for humanistic motivations
doesn't and never has worked. So far, neither has revolution. What
works is appealing to their enlightened self-interest. City and state
governments as a rule have no interest in the poor and/or nonwhite.
Their attitude is: let them move to some other state and collect welfare
there. It's great to talk about self-actualization but when someone is
drowning they need a life-jacket now. An eighteen year old who does not
know how to read is dead in the water, with no chance at all beyond the
dishwashing level. Has anyone here ever heard of the Good Soldier
Schweik? Perhaps what we need at this point is less confrontation and
more infiltration/undermining action - *now.* In New York City the kids
are literally dying in the streets.
Off the soap-box....
Rochel Sara (Rachel) Heckert)
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