Sometimes I panic
Yesterday I found myself in a group of people from mixed backgrounds: An MP and his wife and daughter, a clothes designer/manufacturer and his wife and daughter a retired dentist and his friend, also a retired dentist. I began asking a question I ask many people at least once a day. What did it take for two of the most productive nations on the face of the earth to relinquish their titles as industrial powers manufacturing all they needed to thrive and become totally consumerist? I mean take a look at all you buy, walk in, walk on, look at, look through, pack in, unpack. Everything you are standing on and wearing , from the soles of your feet to the very tippy-top of your head was made on another continent and we sold the equipment, designs and techniques and technologies that make that possible. Moreover, we sold our children’s birthright to work creatively and put them on the dole (unemployment benefit). Until we answer this and recognise the failed governance of our economy and education of young people we cannot really move forward.
and the MP said?
Well….
Whereas I commented the much abbreviated version of the whole on this blog, I also shared about the difficulty I had found working with the happy smiling faces of local so-called support organisations the names of which I leave out for reasons of possible recrimination.
Here in is a reality. I told the group that I had come up with a surefire plan that guaranteed employment and the possibility of perhaps three new businesses owned by trainees that I would train free of charge over a two year period. He asked me whether this would work for poorer socioeconomic groups and even those finding difficulty integrating their lives into the greater society? I said that it would but that that was not the goal, but more to help those who had swallowed the deception that going to university was the answer to all of their dreams only to discover the pill was bitter as well as the placebo. (Dictionary: a measure used to calm, please or control the outcome). The outcome of my offering a free, two-year program for anyone between the age of 17 and 30 resulted in comments that you really don’t want to hear; (
The MP said that he would like to come on the course which I think would really help him to understand some of the issues like, as I explained, the unreality of expecting lone woodworkers to pass on their skills by government offering to pay half his or her salary when the man is working at 50% efficiency or less as soon as he takes on an apprentice. The fact that parents and apprentices think that they are contributing to the craftsman’s output and that they are underpaid. The fact that parents are wiling to pay for knowledge-based education that can be attained from reading books, but they choose University and yet see no need to pay the same fees for an apprentice receiving 8 hour a day, 5 days a week input into their child’s education with hands-on practical life skills. There was a lot more but everyone there wholeheartedly agreed and felt inspired and motivated at what I shared.