This generation of kids...

[sheeplady]

Hi, that's true, but I definitely don't let it bother me. I was working as a Security Guard with an Assistant Professor of History. My pay with a BS in Engineering was $3,000 more a year than his with a PhD in History at a Big Ten university. I'd rather get paid and do history as a hobby.

Just my $0.04 or possibly 300,000 cents I guess

I understand that's your personal choice, but without people following their hearts rather than their paychecks we'd have no social workers, teachers, public defenders, etc. All these people were probably able to find better paying jobs. The value of a job (and it's worth to society) has no relation on how many digits are in that person's salary.

 

[ButteMT61]

The West doesn't frown on teachers - they frown on trades and teacher's unions (from my perspective). As a kid, I don't recall teacher's strikes and all the (at least what's shown on the news) complaining on benefits, hours, etc.This country has abandoned the trades, and I think that's sad. Not everyone is capable or desires to be a lawyer. Not everyone is capable or desires to run a farm. When I was a kid, I felt there was a very good balance to teach us both and value both. What we see today is the class warfare that the government seems to have created with glee. Divide and conquer. Of course it's not in any one profession as Edward stated, but let's not kid ourselves that educated folks are somehow victims of unrelenting hatred. We've got plenty of that to go around. And in the media, I see much more anti-working man attitudes towards one side of the political spectrum. Academia have made it clear that others are boobs for their political leanings. And the other side of the coin is that the media has made unions out to be evil, selfish, and under-producing. All of the above may be true, it may not be. But we're being fed info to put us at odds - and it's working well.

 

[sheeplady]

The key problem here is a culture which values education solely from the perspective of "will this get me a job which pays more" - a culture which in doing so holds education in gross contempt. The fact remains that even had my degrees not led to a specific career - and I don't know that they have necessarily led on to higher salary than might have been possible via other routes - I would still have benefited immeasurably from my education. Those who see economic advantage as being all an education has to offer are, verily, the cynics whom Wilde said know "the price of everything and the value of nothing". Sadly, this way of thinking will only increase as the cost of university education continues to rise and the many, many students to whom the financial cost is significant but who do not qualify for any form of assistance are forced to consider whether they can actually afford it.

You hit the nail on the head. Most of my benefit from my college education (undergraduate degree) didn't come from the content I studied and it didn't lead me to any specific job. But the experiences I had (within and outside of the classroom in the greater university) made my education so incredibly valuable to me. But then I also worked my butt off day and night to support myself and try to get as much out of the experience as I could.

There's incredible value to taking a few years of your life and spending them just learning as an adult, and the university environment encourages that. I was exposed to so much outside of the world of my youth, which was poverty stricken, class restricted, race restricted, and very rural and culturally closed. In the university, I was exposed to people from all over the planet, all different classes, races, experiences, and cultures. And we were all brought together with one goal in mind: to learn. And for the most part, we were all treated as equals in our need and want to learn, despite the fact that we came from such different environments. For a lot of us, that was the first time our lives that we realized that we were as valuable as others because we were being judged for what was inside us, not for the trappings and what was on the outside.

It sounds really sappy, but it was true. There's very few times a person who comes from a background of poverty feels as if society honors them and values them as much as a person with a BMW in the parking lot and a Lexis in the garage. And it also teaches those with the BMW that someone who comes from a background of poverty is their equal in every way shape and form because they are intellectually and emotionally their equal. A well taught and executed education does that.

 

[sheeplady]

The West doesn't frown on teachers - they frown on trades and teacher's unions (from my perspective). As a kid, I don't recall teacher's strikes and all the (at least what's shown on the news) complaining on benefits, hours, etc.This country has abandoned the trades, and I think that's sad. Not everyone is capable or desires to be a lawyer. Not everyone is capable or desires to run a farm. When I was a kid, I felt there was a very good balance to teach us both and value both. What we see today is the class warfare that the government seems to have created with glee. Divide and conquer. Of course it's not in any one profession as Edward stated, but let's not kid ourselves that educated folks are somehow victims of unrelenting hatred. We've got plenty of that to go around. And in the media, I see much more anti-working man attitudes towards one side of the political spectrum. Academia have made it clear that others are boobs for their political leanings. And the other side of the coin is that the media has made unions out to be evil, selfish, and under-producing. All of the above may be true, it may not be. But we're being fed info to put us at odds - and it's working well.

Well, that would suggest that all academics have the same political leanings- which I can reassure you- is NOT true. It also suggests that tradesmen, union members, all of the working class, etc. all have the same political leanings- which I can also reassure you- is NOT true.

If you're suggesting that the political divide between parties in this country is one between academics and the working class, you have very little knowledge of the diversity of how the working class views politics. Nevermind academics, a much smaller group.

Much of my family is working class and I wish they'd agree on politics, it would make family dinners a heck of a lot quieter.

ETA: Also, I didn't say the West frowned on teachers- what I said is that the West does not value teachers as much as in the East. That is a fact.

 

[LizzieMaine]

This country has abandoned the trades, and I think that's sad. Not everyone is capable or desires to be a lawyer. Not everyone is capable or desires to run a farm. When I was a kid, I felt there was a very good balance to teach us both and value both.

Well said. I've said it before and I'll say it again,if I had kids I'd encourage them to become plumbers or electricians. There isn't a one of them in this town under the age of sixty, and when they all die off or retire, there's going to be a lot of local PhD's up the creek and in the dark.

 

[ButteMT61]

Well, that would suggest that all academics have the same political leanings- which I can reassure you- is NOT true.

No, not saying that. However, one can most assuredly state that most in fact (in the US) are more prone to one side. I've been intimately involved with four major institutions, and I know that with exceptions, most of the country's places of higher education tend to be Democrat-leaning.I don't care what a teacher's or professor's leanings are - I just care that they're brought into the classroom. School and nightly news should be places where information is given in equal doses to let the consumers decide on what's right for them. I see none of that today - everything, everyone is partisan. As you can see, it doesn't help bring us together as a nation.FWIW, my family is made of of both. Professors, Highway Patrolmen, farmers, miners, teachers, artists, and scientists. I've got it all right here, which makes for fun nights discussing politics lolWe don't even touch the subject. Can't happen.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Hi Lizzie

I could be wrong, but I don't think that there's more than about 20 reporters in the US anymore. With AP and Reuters etc I get the impression (from the internet) that one guy sees a fire and it's in 2000 websites with the same words. You rarely see any news with two viewpoints from actual witnesses, or from interviews of witnesses. We don't have reporters, we have commentators. I can read above a 5th grade level and don't feel the need for commentators.

It would be expensive and would probably make me mad, but I'd almost like to take the courses for a Journalism major to find out how they all learn to be so much smarter than the rest of us.

When I was active in the field, we had seven news outlets covering this county, with a population of less than 20,000. Nothing happened in city government, local education, or local business that didn't get reported on, thoroughly and accurately. Now there are a couple of weekly papers staffed by people who don't seem to get out as much as they should, and a daily based sixty miles away which covers local stories when someone is killed in an accident, caught selling drugs, or arrested for pimping. If this is what they're teaching journalism majors to do nowadays, the ideal of an "informed citizenry" is slipping further and further away.

 

[Noirblack]

When I was active in the field, we had seven news outlets covering this county, with a population of less than 20,000. Nothing happened in city government, local education, or local business that didn't get reported on, thoroughly and accurately. Now there are a couple of weekly papers staffed by people who don't seem to get out as much as they should, and a daily based sixty miles away which covers local stories when someone is killed in an accident, caught selling drugs, or arrested for pimping. If this is what they're teaching journalism majors to do nowadays, the ideal of an "informed citizenry" is slipping further and further away.

I wouldn't think that at journalism school students are being taught only to cover accidents and arrests for drugs and pimping. The more likely cause is the economic pressures that newspapers face today. They probably can't afford to hire enough journalists to do a good job of covering what should be covered.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We had the *initiative* to cover other stories than the obvious ones, and we did it on very low budgets -- and that kind of initiative is what the kids I had to work with did not have. If you told them where to go, when to go there, who to talk to, and what to ask, they might come back with the facts correctly stated, but you still had to sit down and show them why their copy wasn't usable. I was running a newsroom, not a schoolroom, and if someone shows up with a four-year degree I shouldn't have to be teaching them these elementary things. And I don't see as it's any better today, judging from the stuff that actually finds its way into print.

The "reporters" around here now would rather take pictures of sunsets and puppies and quaint rusty tractors sitting in the field than sit thru the tedium of a Zoning Board of Appeals meeting to figure out if some landowner was trying to pull a fast one.

 

[LizzieMaine]

some[/i] institutions, though just as often in my experience with students who expect to be spoonfed and/or seek only to pass exams rather than to actually learn. Naturally I tolerate neither in my classroom.

Which is exactly the problem created by a culture in which no one wants to work at any kind of a job that you can get without holding a degree. I got my start as a reporter because I proved I could do it -- I didn't need a degree to get in the door, I was sent out to cover a story and proved I knew how to gather facts and present them clearly. Today, those opportunities just don't exist -- so every kid feels they *have* to go to college, whether they have the interest or aptitude for it or not, and further they're pressured by guidance counselors and teachers and parents to not just go to *a* college, but to *the* college, the one with the big name and the high placement average. They could get a perfectly fine education going to State U, but if it isn't an elite school they're made to feel they aren't "aiming high" enough. That's rubbish.

I have some strong feelings on this particular issue because of my niece, who was browbeaten into going to a very very high-end school to study dance and theatre -- only to wash out after one semester due to her inability to handle the culture shock of being a small-town working-class kid in a school full of upper-middle-class New York City princesses. Had she gone to a state college, closer to home, she'd be graduating next spring. As it is, she's working as a file clerk in a hospital learning valuable lessons about what happens when your reach exceeds your grasp.

 

[1961MJS]

Hi

I agree that parents are being sold a bill of good with respect to an education will lead to your child's getting a higher paying job. I also agree that having a well rounded education is a good, even a great thing. But unless your education is going to allow you to make up your education investment at some point, it's not worth 30-50% of your parent's income. I can see a family with $100,000 in yearly income paying out $5,000 a year for a degree in French Literature (for example). You're not blowing the bank, your kid went to college, learned something, met people from other places and had a good time. I don't see going into debt for that degree, or paying 30% of your income either. The cost of college has gotten way out of line with inflation etc. That's GOT to change.

Later

 

[Noirblack]

We had the *initiative* to cover other stories than the obvious ones, and we did it on very low budgets -- and that kind of initiative is what the kids I had to work with did not have. If you told them where to go, when to go there, who to talk to, and what to ask, they might come back with the facts correctly stated, but you still had to sit down and show them why their copy wasn't usable. I was running a newsroom, not a schoolroom, and if someone shows up with a four-year degree I shouldn't have to be teaching them these elementary things. And I don't see as it's any better today, judging from the stuff that actually finds its way into print.

The "reporters" around here now would rather take pictures of sunsets and puppies and quaint rusty tractors sitting in the field than sit thru the tedium of a Zoning Board of Appeals meeting to figure out if some landowner was trying to pull a fast one.

I imagine that what goes on in newsrooms today is affected by economics more than you suspect. In my little country of Canada, the so-called "paper of record" sent a number of reporters and editors on unpaid leave over the summer. I think they spun it as a sabbatical. The result was that articles written by staffers were filled with spelling and grammar errors (since the editorial staff was reduced) and the number of AP and Reuters wire stories increased greatly (while the reporters were gone). This newspaper does not want to lower the quality of its product, but it simply doesn't have the resources to keep up quality. It will actually be introducing a pay wall for its website next week. The sad part is that they tried a pay wall about 10 years ago and it failed. So I can't see why it will work this time. Unfortunately if it fails again it will not get them the revenues they need to improve.

In the USA, newspapers have been hit harder than any other medium by the combination of the internet and the recession. When the newspapers decide what to publish, they might be opting for the lighter stuff in the hope that it will retain their readership. That might be a bad decision on their part. Maybe harder news would sell more copies.

 

[gtdean48]

...
In the USA, newspapers have been hit harder than any other medium by the combination of the internet and the recession....

I read NY Times, Washington Post, USA Today, & AJC on line versions. Only see printed versions when they put it outside my door in hotels or offer them as I board an airplane....getting that way about magazines....

http://www.ajc.com/ap/ap/top-news/newsweek-ending-print-edition-job-cuts-expected/nSgXk/

 

[LizzieMaine]

You're not blowing the bank, your kid went to college, learned something, met people from other places and had a good time. I don't see going into debt for that degree, or paying 30% of your income either. The cost of college has gotten way out of line with inflation etc. That's GOT to change.

Indeed. I can learn anything I want to know, have picked up tons of valuable work experience, have gotten to know people from many different walks of life -- from millionaires, senators, and presidential candidates to drug dealers, bottle collectors, and street-corner bums -- and have had a pretty good time, all things considered, while not going to college and living within 40 miles of where I grew up. And it hasn't cost me a nickel in student loan payments.

 

[Undertow]

I imagine that what goes on in newsrooms today is affected by economics more than you suspect. In my little country of Canada, the so-called "paper of record" sent a number of reporters and editors on unpaid leave over the summer. I think they spun it as a sabbatical. The result was that articles written by staffers were filled with spelling and grammar errors (since the editorial staff was reduced) and the number of AP and Reuters wire stories increased greatly (while the reporters were gone). This newspaper does not want to lower the quality of its product, but it simply doesn't have the resources to keep up quality. It will actually be introducing a pay wall for its website next week. The sad part is that they tried a pay wall about 10 years ago and it failed. So I can't see why it will work this time. Unfortunately if it fails again it will not get them the revenues they need to improve.

In the USA, newspapers have been hit harder than any other medium by the combination of the internet and the recession. When the newspapers decide what to publish, they might be opting for the lighter stuff in the hope that it will retain their readership. That might be a bad decision on their part. Maybe harder news would sell more copies.

Noir, I don't disagree entirely, but there is yet another factor which you alluded to at the end of your post - quality of articles.

The Des Moines Register used to be a national newspaper, well respected, well reported, well received. When revenues appeared to be slouching in the 1980s, the nearly 100 year old newspaper sold it private ownership to the slapdash candy-news weasels at Gannett, who had been burning across the country buying up well-respected newspapers.

Gannett was absolutely not interested in competition against their flagship publication, USA Today, and thus many respectable national papers went from excellent editors and reporters staffed across the country, to bare bones operations literally overnight.

Then Gannett, being the chop-licking wolf in sheeps clothing, claimed that the DMR staff was too small to report on significant national issues and should instead focus on local matters. There was always the AP and Reuters feeds. Little by little, decent papers turned into nothing more than juvenile pop-culture rags with "hard hitting" stories about weather and local food fare.

Point being, papers aren't failing simply because computers came into existence, or because the internet has free news. Newspapers became insolvent because the declined to report, among other things.

 

[Undertow]

We had the *initiative* to cover other stories than the obvious ones, and we did it on very low budgets...

Right. You had a man in Washington DC who only earned his bread by keeping his ear down to the ground, looking for a scoop. You had local reporters absorbing police blotters and inside tips for any manner of scandal, murder, robbery or crime. You had editors that followed major events and slung stories out left and right knowing that competent people would be covering the issue.

When I was in college, they didn't teach us ANYTHING about actual journalism. It was all theory and reading, and analyzing; it was about writing stories that sold newspapers - being popular vs reporting. I learned everything I knew from an actual photographer/editor/reporter that had been in the business when business was real.

 

[Noirblack]

Undertow,

Being up in the frozen north, I don't get to see the actual hard copies of the local papers in the USA. But I have never heard much good said about Gannett. The decisions to report fluffier news locally (and hence undermine the actual function of a good local newspaper) sounds like it is coming from higher up. But as for J school grads, I can't see them wanting to go to school just to cover fluff. Some of them must want to be the next Woodward and Bernstein (I hope).

 

[John in Covina]

Being looked down upon is being looked down upon, no matter what the reason.

Isn't that against the law or something?:eeek:

 

[sheeplady]

No, not saying that. However, one can most assuredly state that most in fact (in the US) are more prone to one side. I've been intimately involved with four major institutions, and I know that with exceptions, most of the country's places of higher education tend to be Democrat-leaning.

You said before that academics look down on the political leanings and preferences of the working class (and you suggested they were on the other side of the political spectrum), so it couldn't be that there be Democrats throughout the social structure of our society, just like there are Republicans. Are all union members (most unions representing working class workers) Republicans?

Seriously, one's profession does not a political persuasion make. I can reassure you that. Tendencies, sure. But, really, the ones that cry the loudest are the ones that get all the attention and make anything seem like everybody, but that certainly is not the case.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You said before that academics look down on the political leanings and preferences of the working class...

My own experience has always been that the political science/social science types have been more inclined to come across as though they "identify" with us and assume they know us better than we know ourselves. They might adopt an actual working-class person as a pet or a token, which is patronizing enough, but at worst they end up with someone like Barbara Ehrenreich writing a book about how hard it is to live on a working-class wage, and she knows this from dressing up like a working class person for a month and trying it herself: a phony experience on every level because she always knew she had her privileged life to go back to. Most of the academic types who write about such things would much rather hear their own voices echoed back to them than to actually listen to real working-class people. I trust them even less than I trust the financiers and the bankers -- who I don't trust at all.