University education has an entirely undeserved higher status than industry training

"Nearly twice as many New Zealand school leavers fall into unemployment as undertake workplace-based learning. ...
    "In Germany, approximately half of all school leavers participate in the country’s ‘dual training’ apprenticeship system. In contrast, in New Zealand, only 6% of school leavers undertake workplace-based training ...
    "This represents a significant waste of human capital and opportunity, especially considering that industry training leads to many high-demand vocations.
    "The root of the problem is cultural. University education has higher status [entirely undeserved - Ed] than industry training among parents, schools, teachers, and students themselves.
    "The status disparity is exacerbated by the strong orientation of schools toward university preparation as the default setting. ...
    "If clearer pathways from school to industry training were established as a serious option for all students, esteem for industry training would gradually improve."

~ Michael Johnston from his report 'Trade Routes: Charting New Pathways from Secondary School to Industry Training'. Listen here to a podcast with Johnston discussing the report.

The New Zealand Initiative · Trade Routes: Charting New Pathways from Secondary School to Industry Training

#AI: "How to remove the roadblocks that make it harder for people to make their *own* adjustments to the new era of automation."

"Everyone [Everyone? Really? -Ed] is starting to become concerned that the machines are about to take away all of our jobs—at least, all of the jobs that we do now. ...
    "A lot of this is overhyped and exaggerated, of course. ... in most cases machines will end up augmenting human workers instead of replacing them. ... Yet the example of the Industrial Revolution is not quite that reassuring.
    "That raises the question: Can we do better this time? ... I look at this question from the perspective of a skeptical free-marketer who doubts there’s much government can do to predict what the future will look like or to help people adjust to it. ...
    "Perhaps the [best] focus for government policy would be on figuring out how to remove the roadblocks that make it harder for people to make their own adjustments to the new era of automation. In that spirit, I will propose five broad policy ideas for the new era of automation, beginning in this installment with the first and probably most urgent: education reform.
    "In an era when old skills are being rendered obsolete and new skills will be required, education is the most important way for everyone to adapt to the new era.
    "But just throwing more money at the problem has been a disaster. ... To help people adapt to the new era, we desperately need to reduce the expense of education, but more important, we need to change how we approach it. ...
    "Here are some specific policy proposals to help us get there.

1. More choice and competition in primary and secondary schools. ...
2. More focus on blue-collar skills and apprenticeships. ...
3. Apprenticeships for white-collar jobs. ...
4. Rein in the cost of higher education. ...
5. Make existing higher education obsolete. ...

    "The ideas I have suggested above are the kinds of things we would do if we took that crisis seriously and were really concerned about solving the problem—instead of being concerned about appeasing the entrenched constituencies the current system serves."

~ Robert Tracinski, from his post 'Lighting Fires and Filling Buckets: Policy Ideas for the Age of Automation'

Don’t Assume I'm Smarter Than My Builder

Guest post by Kevin Currie-Knight

Why Schooling Helps Us Devalue the Non-academic

---

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
~ Mark Twain

“So, I figured I’d ask you,” said my builder. “You’re a lot smarter than me and—”

That’s when I stopped him.

Tom knows I am a university lecturer, and he wanted to ask my advice on his daughter’s education. He’s an ex-soldier who never went to college. It makes sense to ask an educator for advice about education, but why does that make me smarter?

I thought about all the times I’ve asked Tom’s advice about the house we are renovating, and about all the times he answered with a tone that implied, “Well, obviously you should…”

“Tom,” I said, “I wouldn’t say I’m smarter than you. It depends on the topic.”

He smiled politely and moved on to his question.

But even if he dismissed my objection as perfunctory, I can’t let it go. Why does our culture trivialise non-academic intelligence and knowledge?

I think the existing structure of schooling plays a big part.

Fantasy Football

Let me tell another story, this one from my days as a high-school special educator. I was teaching a study-skills class to students with learning disabilities. Partly, this course provided students extra time on assignments for other classes. One day, I sent two students to the library to work on a written project assigned for another course. About 10 minutes later, I received a call from the school librarian.

“You should come up here and get these kids, because they are off task and disturbing others!”

When I got to the library, I didn’t want to confront my students immediately. I wanted to see how, exactly, they were being disruptive.

What were they doing? They were adjusting their fantasy football rosters.

As anyone who’s really played fantasy football knows, adjusting your weekly roster involves contemplating a lot of statistics: What are this player’s chances against this team? How does this team do against this type of running back?

That’s what my students were doing in the library: arguing over statistics. Not bad for kids considered to be “learning disabled” in subjects like maths.

Like a good teacher, I interrupted their passionate dispute and instructed them to come back to the room, where they could get going on the more important work of writing an academic paper.

Whether we mean to or not, we constantly reinforce the message that only the stuff kids are taught in school counts as serious learning. Extracurriculars are fine, but what really counts is in their textbooks and homework.

We send them to school precisely because we believe that’s where they’ll be taught the most important subjects. We grade them on those things, and in many ways we measure their worth (at least while they’re in school) by how well they do on tests and school assignments.

Deschooling

I’m certainly not the first person to notice this. Education theorist John Holt wrote about it in his frankly titled essay “School Is Bad for Children”:

Oh, we make a lot of nice noises in school about respect for the child and individual differences, and the like. But our acts, as opposed to our talk, says to the child, “Your experience, your concerns, your curiosities, your needs, what you know, what you want, what you wonder about, what you hope for, what you fear, what you like and dislike, what you are good at or not so good at — all this is of not the slightest importance, it counts for nothing.”

Ivan Illich made a similar point in his book Deschooling Society. Illich suggests that schooling makes us dependent on institutions for learning by convincing us that what we learn in school is important and what we learn outside is not.

Likewise, in Shop Class as Soulcraft, philosopher and auto-mechanic Matthew Crawford bemoans the dichotomy we set up in our schools and society between knowing and doing. Schools are increasingly cancelling programs like shop class to make way for more “knowing” and less doing. Crawford points out that this drastically underestimates the crucial role of thinking in manual labour.

If you are still in doubt, think about this: earlier, I talked about learning disabilities. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), learning disabilities can only exist in academic subjects like reading and math. If you are bad at playing music or drawing, you are not learning disabled — just bad at music or art.

There may be a good reason we leave teaching biology to the schools, and teaching how to care of a car to the home (or to “extracurricular” apprenticeships). There may be good reason we teach algebra in the schools, but not the statistical analysis needed to adjust a fantasy football roster. But the standard segregation of subjects sends the message that what is learned in school must be more important. We send you to a special building to learn it, we grade you on your ability to learn it, and we socially judge much of your worth by your success at it.

Almost by reflex, we ask kids, “What did you learn in school today?,” not, “What did you learn today?” The existence of school has conditioned us to regard what happens there as important, while we relegate what happens outside of school to the dust heap of “extracurriculars.”

So, no, Tom, I am not smarter than you; we’re both pretty smart. It’s just that our school-influenced culture wrongly tells us that what I do is more cerebral and therefore requires more intelligence than what you do. And that’s a bad assumption.

---

Kevin Currie-Knight teaches in East Carolina University’s Department of Special Education, Foundations, and Research.
A version of this post first appeared at The Freeman.

FromTheArchives: Where did all the apprentices go?

Since the subject is forever topical, a repost from 2006. Names have changed, but little else …

The sacking of the Plumbers, Gasfittters and Drainlayers Board yesterday brought with it the news that only 11 percent of the students who passed their National Certificate in Politically Correct Plumbing managed to pass a real examination set by the Board. No wonder Michael Cullen sacked them: how dare they expose the substandard training that trainees receive in their 'Modern Apprenticeships.' How dare these reactionaries hurt the feelings of the poor trainees.

How dare they give the media the opportunity to highlight once again that the number of new entrants to 'Modern Apprenticeships' is falling, and the standard of training they receive is at an all-time low.

Where did it all go wrong for New Zealand's apprenticeship system? That's a question that's been bugging me for a few years.

When I came back to New Zealand in 1995 after a few years away, one of the things that slowly dawned on me was that apprentices had virtually disappeared from the building industry. When I left in 1990, apprentices were everywhere -- almost every builder had one or two, even in the downturn that just began as I left -- but come 1995 they were as hard to find as an honest lawyer.

What had happened, I wondered?

Eleven years later I get an answer: Trevor Loudon suggests it was Lockwood Smith's doing:

Dr. Smith, who promised to rein in the education bureaucrats, was instead seduced by them. The illegitimate offspring of that ill starred union became known as “seamless education.”
Rather than complete a 3 to 5 year apprenticeship, people could instead train over an indefinite period of time, accumulating “unit standards” which would lead to more flexible qualifications and “prove” competence over a range of areas.

Ah, so apprenticeships were killed by our old friend NCEA. Who'd have thunk it.

So what we have today are not “apprentices” as anyone from generations past would recognise: young folk who spend time learning their craft and a work ethic under a master; instead they're students who occasionally get their hands dirty. Because there is a difference you see, between industry-based aprentices and Tech-based trainees.

Let me explain, and give a bit of my own history. Like Trevor, I never did an apprenticeship either. Instead, a very benevolent builder and developer took me on as a carpenter while I studied architecture largely part-time at Uni (something that was very unpopular at the Uni by the way), and to my mind the result was similar to an apprenticeship, and it was as close to the apprenticeship that I was after as I could manage. To that benevolent builder I am still enormously grateful.

Working as I did, I and the other genuine apprentices received about as good a building education as you could get. Apprentices were based on site, working every day from 7:30-5, with only occasional visits to Tech for Block Courses or to Night School for supplementary classes. Apprentices saw themselves as workers -- albeit badly paid workers -- but working was their focus, time-keeping was important, and the training at the Technical Institute they understood to be backing up what they needed to know in order to do their day job properly. On site they learned a work ethic, and they discovered that learning had a point to it: it made you better at your work, and in your chosen trade. It made them Tradesmen.

In addition, because they were part of the crew, every apprentice was taken under their wing by one or two knowledgeable older chaps who were only too happy to show 'their' youngster all the tricks of the trade that they knew -- and their youngsters were generally only too happy to soak up as much as they could by showing all the respect that these old hands deserved. This education was probably at least as valuable again as what an apprentice learned in their Block Courses, but it was nothing that could ever be prescribed in any curriculum or measured by any Unit Standard: it happened only because these apprentices had themselves been able to earn the respect of the grizzled old hands. This training helped make them good Tradesmen.

In short, the apprentices of the eighties learned that work and a work ethic was important, that training was valuable, and that experience was utterly invaluable. Youngsters like this were of great value to any employer, which is perhaps why it was traditional for every builder, however small, to regularly have at least one apprentice working for them; and these apprentices emerged as confident, highly competent and knowledgeable in their trade and all that their trade required. (A fact that many tertiary-trained 'professionals' might like to ponder.)
All this however is virtually the opposite for today's many fewer school-based trainees.

The school-based 'apprentice' training is modelled not on the apprenticeships of the past (from which most professional training could learn a thing or two) but instead on the model of university chalk-and-talk training. The school-based trainee sees himself not as a worker but as a student. The work ethic he learns is the work ethic of a student, with all that implies. Dirty hands are out. Early starts are out. Learning on the job is out. Learning is something that comes from a lecturer -- and as the saying goes: those who can, do; those who can't, lecture -- and then taken to job (if at all) as the new received wisdom. Grizzled old workers with real world experience are seen not as founts of wisdom worthy of respect but as reactionary bigots worthy only of contempt -- after all, who's the one with the newly received wisdom, the shiny diploma, and the true understanding of the Treaty Principles?

In short, and I may over-generalise only a little, today's apprentice -- if you can find one -- is surly, lazy, unthinking, unresponsive, unable to realise how much he doesn't know (and unwilling to learn), and unable to realise which side his bread is buttered on. (I figure if I'm going to be labelled a reactionary bigot I might as well be one.) He works, if at all, only from the neck down. He has yet to learn professional integrity. He emerges instead without real on-the-job skills, without real experience of his chosen trade, without being able to read the basic paperwork of his trade such as plans or specifications, and as a result still unsure whether he's up to it at all, or whether it's really for him. No wonder his 'low self-esteem' needs nurturing.

And what employer in their right mind would want one of these on their job?

And I think Trevor's probably right: the cause of the calamity is Lockwood Smith's capitulation to the education bureaucrats.

What do you think?

RELATED POSTS:

• Apprenticeships: Not achieved
• More worthless degrees please
• Building: Less Government? More Maurice.
• Who'd be a builder?
• LEAKY HOMES, Part 1: The myth of deregulated building

Nelson Mandela's battle against socialism, unionism and interventionism

Guest post by Thomas DiLorenzo

“Workers of the world unite, keep South Africa white.”
–Slogan of early twentieth-century South African Labor Unions

“South Africa’s apartheid is not the corollary of free-market or capitalist forces.
 Apartheid is the result of anti-capitalistic or socialistic efforts to
subvert the operation of market (capitalistic) forces.”
–Walter E. Williams, South Africa’s War Against Capitalism

The international socialist movement has long attempted to associate another kind of socialist movement – the former South African Apartheid laws – as some kind of abuse of capitalism.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Government-imposed discrimination against black South Africans was instigated by white labor unions associated with various Marxist and communist movements.  It was a pervasive system of government regulation, regimentation and control.  This of course is the exact opposite of free-market capitalism.

It was this form of massive government interventionism that the late Nelson Mandela battled against in his youth, and for which he was imprisoned for twenty-seven years by the South Africa government. 

What Was South African “Apartheid”?

Two books are indispensable to understanding the system of government-imposed, institutionalized discrimination against South African blacks known as “Apartheid.”  They are The Colour Bar by William H. Hutt, and South Africa’s War Against Capitalism by Walter E. Williams.  Both were published before the final collapse of Apartheid.

The origins of institutionalized discrimination against South African blacks were in the violent, Marxist-inspired white labor union movement (which had American ties) of the early twentieth century.  One of the first leaders of this movement, as Hutt describes, was one W. H. Andrews, who formed a chapter of the International Socialist League and who became the first secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa.  He championed the use of violence and terrorism to “protect” white workers from competition from blacks.  This union movement eventually became joined at the hip with the South African government so as to use the coercive powers of government (which can be far more violent and terroristic than mere unions alone) to deprive South African blacks of economic opportunity.

The first “Colour Bar Act,” as they were known, was the 1911 Mines and Works Act, which listed numerous jobs that could not legally be performed by blacks.  South African capitalistsopposed this law because they wanted to be able to hire employees in a free market.  In such a market, the generally lower-skilled and less-educated black workers (less skilled because of inferior educational opportunities as well as racism) could indeed find employment, albeit at a lower, entry-level wage than more experienced and skilled white workers.  The unions’ main goal was to deprive “the capitalist class,” which they harshly condemned, of this opportunity to hire black workers.  As Hutt explained, what the general secretary of the white workers’ labor union opposed was “the desire of the capitalist class to achieve economies by bringing better-remunerated and more responsible work within the reach of the Africans.”

The Mines and Works Act of 1926 was the result of “the combination of socialism and racism” brought about by the ruling Nationalist party, a socialist political party that had formed a coalition government with the South African Labour Party.  The lynchpin of this law was known as “the rate for the job,” a law that mandated minimum wages that precluded thousands of black workers from offering to become employed at entry-level wages, thereby depriving them of employment opportunity altogether.  This of course is the effect of minimum-wage laws anywhere and everywhere.   As Hutt wrote, the law “had the effect of preventing the entry of subordinate races or classes into the protected field.”

A 1922 Apprenticeship Act saw to it that only whites could attain apprenticeships in numerous trades, with apprenticeship being a prerequisite for employment.  When South African blacks attempted to bypass all these socialistic, protectionist labor laws by becoming entrepreneurs and starting their own business enterprises, the union-dominated South African government issued Obama-style “directives” or executive orders forbidding the opening of any black-owned businesses,  “even in African urban areas.”  There was also a system of “job reservations” where hundreds of jobs were “reserved” for white workers only.

There were also pervasive separate-and-unequal laws and regulations affecting just about every institution in South African society.  Inter-racial marriage was outlawed, as was sexual intercourse between whites and non-whites.  These all of course had nothing whatsoever to do with capitalism or markets or a free society and were entirely the work of the dark hand of statism.  As Walter Williams concluded in South Africa’s War Against Capitalism, “The whole ugly history of apartheid has been an attack on free markets and the rights of individuals, and a glorification of centralized government power.”

Thomas DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland. This article is excerpted from a post first first appearing at LewRockwell.Com.

Posted with Blogsy

Apprenticeships: Not achieved

Tradesmen are the workers of the world. Successful tradesmen are the lifeblood of an industrial economy; their intelligent labours make possible the production and infrastructure without which there is no industrial economy.

New Zealand has too few tradesmen, too few apprentices and the number is getting fewer. Traditional apprenticeships were killed off by the so called "seamless education" promoted by Lockwood Smith's NCEA, and Labour's so called "Modern Apprenticeships" have signally failed to fulfil the headline promises of posturing politicians.

Last year it was revealed for example that only 11 percent of the students who passed their National Certificate in Politically Correct Plumbing managed to subsequently pass a genuinely testing examination that was set by the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board.

And this morning's Press reveals [hat tip Whale Oil] that even those students who start these "Modern Apprenticeships" are mostly failing to finish.

Figures made public suggest [only] 46 per cent of those enrolled in 2001 and 2002 completed their training in the expected four years.

A calculation that's beyond most NCEA graduates reveals that 54 percent of those starting these apprenticeships failed to finish. That's pathetic. "More than $100 million has been committed to [Labour's "Modern Apprencticeship" scheme] since its launch in 2000," yet "as at December 31, [only] 9466 active modern apprentices were in training," and barely 3000 had completed their training.

That really is pathetic. Unemployment among sixteen- to seventeen-year-olds is at fourteen percent; loads of youngsters are heading off to uni to get degrees in "visual communications design," "contemporary cultural studies," and "critical education theory." Meanwhile, the country's employers are crying out for skilled tradesmen. Has anyone idea where they're going to come from, or how it's possible to interest youngsters in learning about good tradecraft instead of bullshit?

Perhaps it might encourage them if they learned that New Zealand's richest man started out in life as an apprentice panel beater?

See also:

• Where did all the apprentices go?
• Apprenticeship, the overlooked institution - Trevor Loudon
  

Where did all the apprentices go?

The sacking of the Plumbers, Gasfittters and Drainlayers yesterday brought with it the news that only 11 percent of the students who passed their National Certificate in Politically Correct Plumbing managed to pass a real examination set by the Board. No wonder Michael Cullen sacked them: how dare they expose the substandard training that trainees receive in their 'Modern Apprenticeships.' How dare these reactionaries hurt the feelings of the poor trainees.

How dare they give the media the opportunity to highlight once again that the number of new entrants to 'Modern Apprenticeships' is falling, and the standard of training they receive is at an all-time low.

Where did it all go wrong for New Zealand's apprenticeship system? That's a question that's been bugging me for a few years.

When I came back to New Zealand in 1995 after a few years away, one of the things that slowly dawned on me was that apprentices had virtually disappeared from the building industry. When I left in 1990, apprentices were everywhere -- almost every builder had one or two, even in the downturn that had just begun as I left -- but come 1995 they were about as hard to find as it was to find an honest lawyer.

What had happened?

Eleven years later I get an answer: Trevor Loudon suggests it was Lockwood Smith's doing.

Dr. Smith, who promised to rein in the education bureaucrats, was instead seduced by them. The illegitimate offspring of that ill starred union became known as “seamless education.”

Rather than complete a 3 to 5 year apprenticeship, people could instead train over an indefinite period of time, accumulating “unit standards” which would lead to more flexible qualifications and “prove” competence over a range of areas.

Ah, so apprenticeships were killed by our old friend NCEA. Who'd have thunk it. What we have today are not apprentices; instead they're students who occasionally get their hands dirty --- there is a difference you see, between industry-based aprentices and Tech-based trainees.

Let me explain, and give a bit of my own history. Like Trevor, I never did an apprenticeship either. Instead, a very benevolent builder and developer took me on as a carpenter while I studied architecture largely part-time at Uni (something that was very unpopular at the Uni by the way), and to my mind the result was similar to an apprenticeship, and it was as close to the apprenticeship that I was after as I could manage. To that benevolent builder I am still enormously grateful.

Working as I did, I and the other genuine apprentices received about as good a building education as you could get. Apprentices were based on site, working every day from 7:30-5, with only occasional visits to Tech for Block Courses or to Night School for supplementary classes. Apprentices saw themselves as workers -- albeit badly paid workers -- but working was their focus, time-keeping was important, and the training at the Technical Institute they unerstood to be backing up what they needed to know in order to do their day job properly. On site they learned a work ethic, and they discovered that learning had a point to it: it made you better at your work, and in your chosen trade. It made them Tradesmen.

In addition, because they were part of the crew, every apprentice was taken under their wing by one or two knowledgable older chaps who were only too happy to show 'their' youngster all the tricks of the trade that they knew -- and their youngsters were generally only too happy to soak up as much as they could by showing all the respect that these old hands deserved. This education was probably at least as valuable again as what an apprentice learned in their Block Courses, but it was nothing that could ever be prescribed in any curriculum or measured by any Unit Standard: it happened only because these apprentices had themselves been able to earn the respect of the grizzled old hands. This training helped make them good Tradesmen.

In short, the apprentices of the eighties learned that work and a work ethic was important, that training was valuable, and that experience was utterly invaluable. Youngsters like this were of great value to any employer, which is perhaps why it was traditional for every builder, however small, to regularly have at least one apprentice working for them; and these apprentices emerged as confident, highly competent and knowledgable in their trade and all that their trade required. (A fact that many tertiary-trained 'professionals' might like to ponder.)

All this however is virtually the opposite for today's many fewer schoool-based trainees.

The school-based 'apprentice' training is modelled not on the apprenticeships of the past (from which most professional training could learn a thing or two) but instead on the model of university chalk-and-talk training. The school-based trainee sees himself not as a worker but as a student. The work ethic he learns is the work ethic of a student, with all that implies. Dirty hands are out. Early starts are out. Learning on the job is out. Learning is something that comes from a lecturer -- and as the saying goes: those who can, do; those who can't, lecture -- and then taken to job (if at all) as the new received wisdom. Grizzled old workers with real world experience are seen not as founts of wisdom worthy of respect but as reactionary bigots worthy only of contempt -- after all, who's the one with the newly received wisom, the shiny diploma, and the true understanding of the Treaty Principles?

In short, today's apprentice -- if you can find one -- is surly, lazy, unthinking, unresponsive, unable to realise how much he doesn't know (and unwilling to learn), and unable to realise which side his bread is buttered on. (I figure if I'm going to be labeled a reactionary bigot I might as well be one.) He works, if at all, only from the neck down. He emerges without real on-the-job skills, without real experience of his chosen trade, and as a result still unsure whether he's up to it at all, or whether it's really for him. No wonder his 'low self-esteem' needs nurturing.

And what employer in their right mind would want one of these on their job?

And I think Trevor's probably right: Lockwood Smith's capitulation to the education bureaucrats probably is the cause of what happened. What do you think?

LINK: Apprenticeship, the overlooked institution - part 1 - New Zeal (Trevor Loudon)
Sacked plumbers board strikes back over safety - Dominion Post

TAGS: Education, Politics-NZ