…and neither can he do much of anything else, but he has a really great self-image and thinks he deserves nothing but the best and that all he has to do is show up and the world is his oyster. 
If you are a girl, substitute Georgette (or some other feminine name you like) for Johnny.
I am not an educator, professionally or privately. But I do have to deal with young people who enter the work place after they exit todays educational system, and I’m left to wonder to myself what this kid spent the last 15 or so years doing while he or she was supposedly being educated in the best country in the world.
Apparently the primary goal of todays educational system is to teach a kid that no matter what, they are the best, deserve the best, and are equal to anyone else.
This lesson is taught without regard to any native or learned talents they might possess, and the most distressing part is the first time one of these kids is disciplined in a workplace, is apparently also the first time in their lives that anyone ever indicates to them that they are not the most talented person in the room.
My partner has a wonderful post on Colorado House Bill 1238 which is a proposal that students no longer be retained to take classes over again. Students will be “socially” promoted – I suppose so that they don’t feel bad about not making the grade.
For crying the heck out loud – this is just one more sign that our society has climbed to a whole new height, and is now falling off the other side.
I don’t mean to be cruel, but what is wrong with honesty? If a kid doesn’t perform, he isn’t passed to the next grade. Really! It’s OK for people to just be “regular”. If you don’t peform at your job, you don’t get to keep it. Kids need to learn that early.
Not everyone is cut out to be a lawyer, doctor, or rocket scientist. If a kid is flunking a course, then we need to be honest and by all means let the kid know instead of blowing rose-scented air up his butt and letting him get away with thinking he’s entitled to a corner office. It’s a big, bad world out there, and when the kid who was socially passed through six grades of school gets out there, he’s in for one hell of a shock.
I mean, what’s wrong with being a garbage man? Or a checkout person at the supermarket, or the person who hands you your fries at the drive-through window, or the guy who mows your lawn? (From what we have to pay to the 4-guys who take all of 12 minutes to mow our lawn once a week – lawncare may not be a bad career choice.)
Most of my relatives worked with their hands for a living. Almost all of them did not go to college, and several of them didn’t finish high school. My dad could barely read and hardly write, and his next older brother couldn’t even sign his name. In the 1960’s, one of my dad’s sisters was actually a migrant worker, picking vegetables seasonably for awhile. They all raised fine familys, eventually owned their own homes, drove nice cars and led happy lives.
I’m not saying these kids are stupid, but, so what if they are? We should at least be honest with them, and point them to careers they can actually perform, and help them be proud about who they are.
This idea that everyone needs a college degree is baloney. For starters, most kids entering college today read at a level most high-school freshmen were required to obtain in the 1950’s and 60’s. Most “college” today is what anyone over 50 remembers as “high school”.
America today has more jobs in the service industry than in any other career field. By “service” I’m talking about jobs that don’t require a college degree. Why should a kid who just doesn’t have it academically be made to feel inadequate because he can’t make it in college?
Not being able to do algebra does not make you a loser. Not being able to disect a sentence does not make you stupid. Being unable to name the capitals of all the states does not mean you are a bad person. However, being unable to do these things may mean that you have to take sixth grade twice, or that you don’t get into Princeton, or that you’ll probably never be a CEO.
It all starts with how we parent today. It’s fine to make kids feel good about themselves, I think it is important. I wish my parents had done a better job on that with me. BUT, we’ve carried it too far. The sense of entitlement we have has taken over and caused great damage to American society.
How else do you explain someone who works as a stockboy at Home Depot making $12.50 an hour thinking he can buy a $400,000 house and keep up the payments? It wasn’t all bad bankers, give me a freaking break.
I rented a house to a kid awhile back, and I run credit checks before I give them a lease. A 25-year old kid, working a decent job managing a retail store, making $45,000 a year. I wondered why he wanted to rent my very small house on the edge of a somewhat seedy neighborhood for $500 a month when he could be living downtown in a glass-windowed studio.
He was carrying $75,000 in college loans and all his credit cards were maxed. He had decent credit, but even with that nice income, it was all he could do to pay the bills he had run up. At least he was smart enough to take it easy for awhile on living expenses.
We need to do a much better job at teaching our kids that you need to earn your rewards, that it isn’t all easy, that hardly anything is given to you for free, and that it is perfectly OK that you can’t buy a house right out of school. All good things come in time. There is nothing wrong with doing your best. A good name is a second inheritance. A tree is known by it’s fruit, not it’s leaves. (Insert your favorite maxim here).
I’m all for teaching our kids that they can do anything if they set their minds to it, but we also need to insert a reality check and let them know that some people go farther either through harder work, better brains, more money or just plain luck, and that’s OK too. There’s a place in the world for everyone.
I found your blog by googling “What’s wrong with being a garbage man” and I was not disappointed by this fine post addressing exactly that issue. However, I’d just like to point out that what’s wrong with some of the job options you mentioned is that it can be difficult-to-impossible to actually “live well” on the salary they earn. Now, what do I mean by “live well”, because I certainly don’t mean living in a $400,000 house.
I have asked myself the following questions: “Should a person working 40 hrs a week doing something that is ‘valuable’ to society be able to raise their children in a safe neighborhood? Should they be able to feed their family healthy food? Should they be able to afford medical care when needed? Should they be able to know that their children are getting a good education and, when necessary, safe childcare?” (I put “valuable” in quotes, because, like “living well”, there is significant room for debate about what it actually means.) For me, the answer is obviously yes. Should a fast food worker working a hard job for 40 hours a week be able to afford all those things in our developed and wealthy nation? I assert that the answer is yes. Sadly, it seems that much of our society does not agree, and that’s “what’s wrong with being a garbage man;” that’s why everyone aspires to a corner office.
Tehm:
Thanks so much for taking time out of your day to read my opinion and post a reply. It seems to me that what you propose for our society is remarkably close to the European model of socialism practiced in France and other EU countries.
While I have no problem with socialism, our government isn’t socialistic – yet. Over the protests of many, I would speculate that we indeed are very much a class based society, with the class you belong to based on your income. Another name for this would be capitalism I suppose.
Yes, a full time employee at McDonalds may expect to have the best in medical care, the best and flashiest car, and to be able to send their children off to a private school, but those expectations are simply unrealistic. In order to have those things, we need to work our way up the capitalistic class ladder. I’m not saying it is fair, I’m simply saying that it is the way it works in our society.
It’s fine to have the aspirations of upper middle class or the wealthy, but today’s kids seem to think that they deserve all these things simply because they exist. Perhaps that is true, in a truly utopian society – and our America is gradually moving to the left where these things may be possible. But, even if a society grants you decent health care and a free education all the way through post graduate school, shouldn’t we at least teach our children to be thankful?
Wow! It’s interesting that when I said “safe child care” you heard “flashy car”!