K-12 fall plans

[polly_mer]

Lots of people could do a job that is better/ more advanced, etc., than the one they got now, but there ain't enough jobs in many if not most of these more sophisticated areas than folks who could and would take em.  One might believe one is so superior that one will certainly beat the odds, etc., but, well.... maybe so, maybe not.  What exactly, and I am trying, I guess, to give you a chance to explain yourself, would be the contingency plans most of these lower-income people should have, how could they get such a contingency in place, etc.?

Since no one else wrote it:

1) The people who come from lower SES families in a dying place need to leave the area to have a good shot at anything. 

2)  Education alone doesn't fix the problem of having fewer and fewer jobs that can be done by the person of average intelligence with minimal training in that specific job family.

3) People who aren't competitive for one of the few good jobs are just screwed and getting more screwed.  There's no plan that can be put in place individually.  Those folks need to either opt for a different life that doesn't revolve around paid employment (e.g., subsistence farming, informal barter economy) or they will continue to slowly be on the edge waiting to drop below being able to live inside and eat regularly. 

[Caracal]

Lots of people could do a job that is better/ more advanced, etc., than the one they got now, but there ain't enough jobs in many if not most of these more sophisticated areas than folks who could and would take em.  One might believe one is so superior that one will certainly beat the odds, etc., but, well.... maybe so, maybe not.  What exactly, and I am trying, I guess, to give you a chance to explain yourself, would be the contingency plans most of these lower-income people should have, how could they get such a contingency in place, etc.?

Since no one else wrote it:

1) The people who come from lower SES families in a dying place need to leave the area to have a good shot at anything. 

2)  Education alone doesn't fix the problem of having fewer and fewer jobs that can be done by the person of average intelligence with minimal training in that specific job family.

3) People who aren't competitive for one of the few good jobs are just screwed and getting more screwed.  There's no plan that can be put in place individually.  Those folks need to either opt for a different life that doesn't revolve around paid employment (e.g., subsistence farming, informal barter economy) or they will continue to slowly be on the edge waiting to drop below being able to live inside and eat regularly.

Gee, I wonder why these people don't just realize this and move somewhere else?

The obvious answer is that mobility gets more difficult, not less when you're poor. Wealthy and middle class people are more likely to have the sort of family connections that can translate across distances. If you're poor, you usually rely a lot on family and friends for things like childcare, but if you move, you lose all of that social insurance and if things go wrong you've got no backup. You also might be leaving behind family members who rely on you, especially elderly or disabled people. Also, moving is expensive. It would be nice if every place where jobs were plentiful was welcoming to everyone, but surely you can also understand that if you're black, you might have some very real concerns about just picking up and moving to some random part of the country where there may not be lots of other black people.

[kaysixteen]

Whilst I do believe that some of her regular nemeses around here have mistreated Polly over the years, sometimes, and sadly increasingly so in recent months, she just says dumb stuff.   Stuff that owes more or less everything to the Gospel according to Ayn Rand.  In a parallel universe.

[nebo113]

Lots of people could do a job that is better/ more advanced, etc., than the one they got now, but there ain't enough jobs in many if not most of these more sophisticated areas than folks who could and would take em.  One might believe one is so superior that one will certainly beat the odds, etc., but, well.... maybe so, maybe not.  What exactly, and I am trying, I guess, to give you a chance to explain yourself, would be the contingency plans most of these lower-income people should have, how could they get such a contingency in place, etc.?

Since no one else wrote it:

1) The people who come from lower SES families in a dying place need to leave the area to have a good shot at anything. 

2)  Education alone doesn't fix the problem of having fewer and fewer jobs that can be done by the person of average intelligence with minimal training in that specific job family.

3) People who aren't competitive for one of the few good jobs are just screwed and getting more screwed.  There's no plan that can be put in place individually.  Those folks need to either opt for a different life that doesn't revolve around paid employment (e.g., subsistence farming, informal barter economy) or they will continue to slowly be on the edge waiting to drop below being able to live inside and eat regularly.

Gee, I wonder why these people don't just realize this and move somewhere else?

The obvious answer is that mobility gets more difficult, not less when you're poor. Wealthy and middle class people are more likely to have the sort of family connections that can translate across distances. If you're poor, you usually rely a lot on family and friends for things like childcare, but if you move, you lose all of that social insurance and if things go wrong you've got no backup. You also might be leaving behind family members who rely on you, especially elderly or disabled people. Also, moving is expensive. It would be nice if every place where jobs were plentiful was welcoming to everyone, but surely you can also understand that if you're black, you might have some very real concerns about just picking up and moving to some random part of the country where there may not be lots of other black people.

I live in one of those poor, rural areas where coal was the only industry and now isn't.  We got nothing to replace it.  Yesterday, a man in his 50s came to do some yard work for me.  He'd been laid off from one of the few coal companies still pulling coal.  THERE ARE NO JOBS HERE.  He isn't dumb, but more schooling isn't the answer for him.  He's considering leaving the area BUT WHERE DOES A BIG TRUCK MECHANIC, with nothing other than years of experience but no paper credentials,  GET A JOB?????  He's screwed but good.

[FishProf]

Shooting the messenger(s) does no good when:

1) What is happening now is not, and can not, work
2) The only viable solution is not possible.

Well and truly screwed. 

So what do we DO?

[ciao_yall]

I live in one of those poor, rural areas where coal was the only industry and now isn't.  We got nothing to replace it.  Yesterday, a man in his 50s came to do some yard work for me.  He'd been laid off from one of the few coal companies still pulling coal.  THERE ARE NO JOBS HERE.  He isn't dumb, but more schooling isn't the answer for him.  He's considering leaving the area BUT WHERE DOES A BIG TRUCK MECHANIC, with nothing other than years of experience but no paper credentials,  GET A JOB?????  He's screwed but good.

Trucking companies. Railways, bus services, public transit agencies. We are facing a shortage of aircraft mechanics in our area and the airlines are ramping up training.

[Parasaurolophus]

My BIL is a mining equipment mechanic. He and my sister recently moved several provinces over. He has a new job doing mechanical work for the forestry and oil industries.

But his old job still flies him back periodically to work on the mining equipment.

[kaysixteen]

Skilled big truck mechanics do have many more specific skills than most of these displaced workers we are talking about here, and yes, there are places that would hire em.  But age discrimination is still there, and, of course, all the problems attendant with moving to the location where jobs may be found remain, and moving is actually harder in one's mid-50s, by a lot, than it would be for someone even in their 30s.

[Vkw10]

I wonder if the big truck mechanic would be qualified for a job as a SC school bus mechanic? I have a relative in the SC Department of Education who tells me that bus mechanics and statisticians are always in demand there. He finds it ironic that one requires a GED and experience, while the other requires a Ph.D. but that's the two jobs they can't keep filled.

[lightning]

This thread sure got off-topic, but what is being said and revealed is important.

I taught in a rural super-dinky. This rural area that I was in was devastated by the closure of the primary economic driver (manufacturing) of their small community.

What are we to do for them?

In my brief time there, I contracted a regular housekeeper, a lawn person, a regular in-home care-giver, and a person that did regular odd jobs for me. All four were once directly employed by the primary economic driver or indirectly.

The best thing I did for them was not that I hired them and that they had a little earned $ as a result. The most important part was that I treated them with dignity and respect and expressed that I was dependent on their services (and I truly was dependent on them) and compensated them for my dependency on them. That goes a long way, in addition to the simple $.

A small college cannot, all of a sudden, be the savior for a dying community, where a once proud populace has been reduced to relying on government programs, charity, and odd jobs (over the long haul, student-by-student, yes, but displaced manufacturing workers are not in a position to commit to the same career/life preparation that is suitable for a teenager, nor do they have the same assumed mobility). However, a college's individual faculty, staff, and admin who are privileged with a good job, can at least recognize their challenges and make their day-to-day interactions with them one of dignity. That begins with not advising people to move and get a job and to wipe the smug air of superiority off of our faces and not make our degrees and academic titles the differentiator between us and "the other."

Coming back to the original topic, my urban area is seeing an uptick in COVID-19 cases in the schools (k-12 and higher-ed). Not big, yet, but significantly trending upwards. If we don't contain it, we are screwed. Bringing back the topic of those that are socioeconomically dis-advantaged, the USA in their response to COVID-19 is uniquely positioned to fail. We simply do not have the social safety net and social programs in place to encourage people to socially distance. And our culture ridicules the unemployed. Parents from lower socioeconomic rungs are sending their kids to physical school because they have no choice, if they want to go to work. It's no wonder that we are failing.

[mamselle]

Our local public schools start back tomorrow, with two days (M and W, I think) in-school, three days at home per week.

(They would usually have opened the day after Labor Day; they waited in order to give people time to quarantine from end-of-summer trips, I suspect.)

I once subbed in this system. I have mixed feelings about the prognosis. Some families will be good, careful, and compliant. Others, not so much.

It will be interesting to see how long it lasts before they're back to fully online....I suspect sooner rather than later, although they might make it work.

M.

[Stockmann]

However, a college's individual faculty, staff, and admin who are privileged with a good job, can at least recognize their challenges and make their day-to-day interactions with them one of dignity. That begins with not advising people to move and get a job and to wipe the smug air of superiority off of our faces and not make our degrees and academic titles the differentiator between us and "the other."

You're conflating two completely different things - treating people without academic degrees or title with smug superiority and as the "other," and recognizing on the other hand that sometimes leaving is the only viable option, which is semetimes true also for academics. I've known enough fools with PhDs, or toxic, nasty, dysfunctional or dishonest people with them, or other higher degrees, to not assume a PhD says anything much about a person outside of a very narrow professional context, and I am or have been close to people who don't have a PhD or indeed, a higher degree. But I also have little sympathy with people who are doing badly in a place that is doing badly (or worse, a dying town) but choose to make no attempt to leave. This is partly due to my own experience - I've lived in three different parts of my own (developing) country, which has convinced me that if a region is persistently doing badly, then all the can-do risk-takers will either succeed locally or leave, whereas if a place is doing comparatively well it will attract can-do risk-takers, while people who won't leave narrow comfort zones will stay put in either case - which in turn creates different local cultures which perpetuate economic differences.
Of course the lower you are on the socioeconomic scale the harder it is to move - indeed, the harder it is to do pretty much anything, but the lower on the scale also means the less you have to lose by leaving.

[polly_mer]

Whilst I do believe that some of her regular nemeses around here have mistreated Polly over the years, sometimes, and sadly increasingly so in recent months, she just says dumb stuff.   Stuff that owes more or less everything to the Gospel according to Ayn Rand.  In a parallel universe.

Many people are just screwed at this point and that number is increasing as the competency level to be paid for a middle class job that needs to be done increases past the point that a person of average intelligence and skills can do

There is no solution that saves those lives while letting the rest of us have good lives in a modern American sense.

But, sure, the problem is I'm dumb for knowing too much about reality instead of reality being very dire at this point., even though I did move in middle age before the college closed and we had no options.  Super Dinky will not be open fall 2021.

[Vkw10]

Back to topic of thread.

Most of the schools in this area are online temporarily. At least one has face-to-face on alternating days, with students doing self-study with worksheets on their at home days. Reactions of parents I know range from "it's going better than I feared" to "it's a total disaster." Some of the difference is clearly related to what the school's implemented, while some is related to age and abilities of child. No one seems to have any idea when schools will return to usual schedules.

My university will open spring registration soon. We have a faculty member seriously considering asking for unpaid leave for spring semester. His spouse is hospital physician, so he's trying to handle remote school for two young children while teaching online himself. It's not going well. I may have to sub for him this semester if school stays remote.

This pandemic has certainly made the role of public schools as childcare providers for working parents evident. It's also rather frightening to see just how much of safety net depends on children attending school, as child nutrition programs, medical screenings, vaccinations, and other programs were funneled through schools. It makes me wonder how teachers have time to do any teaching.

[apl68]

We've had a rash of quarantines at our high school, including much of the football team.  Not many active cases thus far.