Student of the Future

The future is a scary prospect for anyone but this is doubly so, I feel, for the American Student. Students in our modern society have a lot coming to them; guaranteed primary and secondary educations, and a relatively acessable post-secondary education, at the very least vocational training. However how likely is it that these students will need, use, or even have these options, in the future? I believe the student of tomorrow will have to look at educational sucession in a different light and with a greater deal of realism and pragmatism.

Unfortunately for many students currently enrolled or recently graduated from a post-secondary (usually a undergraduate) degree program there are few options open to them for career opportunities. This is a function of the recessing economy and steady instability (haha) of job growth. With unemployment rising, at current, and outsourcing ever expanding what options does the recenty graduated twenty-something year old person have?

Being among those happy few, I know from experience that there are few options out there. One has to be in a very specialized field to get a job. Many of us find ourselves back in our jobs we held in high school, flipping burgers, packing groceries, or, as it is in my case, delivering. The few fields that were formerly safe bets; education, law enforcement, medicine, etc, are currently shrinking instead of growing like we were told six years ago. So many of us with relatively general credentials, such as a english or history degree or even business, are left wanting. What went wrong?

Our high schools, once reguarded as the finest in the world, are failing our students. The world doesn't need another lawyer or doctor or businessman, there are already enough. But what have we lost in the last thirty years? We have seen our workers, the blue-collar man, the farmers and factory workers dissapear. Where did they go? Well many to college and then they went on to the East Side and go their condo apartments or suburban castles. Now what? What happens when the industries that built our nation dont have the pool of workers that used to supply demand? They have sold out, as the remaining few workers demanded more and more from their corperate bosses. Its cheaper to do it in Mexico and China than Detroit and Pittsburg. So if white collar jobs are bloated with excess employees and applicants then why do we sell our production to other places?

If people were told at an early age that it is, in fact, acceptable to be a steel worker maybe we would have a steel industry. The same could be said for farmers and factory workers. Maybe these industries wouldn't have left in the first place, maybe we could rebuild them, maybe we will have to. With our economy out of control, the globalization powering oil drying up, and demand for expansion of domestic American production growing maybe it becomes the job of schools to tell students it is ok to be part of that growth.

So can our schools deliver such an unsavory message to students and parents? Do we really want to say "hey kids, its OK to work on an assembly line or mine coal." Will parents of suburbia allow their children to stay out of college in lieu of a job as an mechanics apprentice? I don't know if it will be acceptable but it seems that if we want to grow those parts of our economy, the ones that once made this country great, we will need to say its OK.

But if we supply workers will industry come back? Do we need to build it before they will come? I think it will be a process driven, of course, by necessity. Any company looking for positive P.R. will want to say it is expanding operations in the U.S.. Many of the Japanese car makers have already capitalized on this reopening or building new assembly plants in the lower 48 in order to supply the volume needed by their customers. Can the same be done with the consumer goods we all use every day? Yes, and it will be cheaper than importing these goods, at least it will be soon. As oil dries up and the battle over the next great black gold intensifies, many companies will have to bring production state side. The great intercontinental processsion of super tankers and container fleets will not be able to be supported. Signs of this are already apparent as some shippers are planning to retrofit their vessels with sails to cut fuel costs and consumption, but this is a desperate action of a dieing industry.

As the switch comes back from white collar, no dirt in my nails, jobs. We need to show our students and young people that a job is a job, and no matter what it is you are sucessful as long as you are happy. If that means putting the dash boards into the next F-150's or assembling solar panels, thats still good. Any domestic expansion is good and should be encouraged. Bring our students back home to the farm and show them how to do it.

Apps; App Atrophy of Humanity and Human Interactions

Everyone loves Apps, I'll admit even I do. But I have to wonder what they are doing to us as people. Is it the normal progression of our species to allow a computer to work out tip money for us or find our ways home? I agree that apps for your phone and widgets for your computer are great, they save time and time is money. But in the long run are we really serving ourselves by forgeting how to do things without being held by the iHand and guided through our iLives?

Lets look at some of the things we are losing as a society by our apps. According to Times the top ten iPhone apps of 09 were:
Tweety 2 (Twitter)
Yelp (restaraunt and bar reviews)
Slacker (streaming music)
Flight Track Pro (real time flight tracking)
Mint (budgeting tool)
Slingbox (mobile TV)
Small Chair (moble reading material)
Run Keeper (work out trainer)
Photoshop Moble (photoshop on the go)
Locavore (find the good local eats)

Ok so the top 10 of 2009 don't really eat away at human interactions or abilities that we should have as people but there are some things that raise eyebrows about what we are doing and how as people.

For instance the application Slingbox, awesome as it may be to the TV addicts, allows us to completely unplug from reality and suck ourselves into the world of TV sitcoms and dramas for however long we want. So on the bus and at the bar should we expect to or want to see everyone pacified by TV streaming to our phones? I think that might be destroing interactions that are very important to have. For instance you are going to become completely unsocial in social places if you sit there watching TV all the time. People wont come up to you and want to talk. Kinda missing the point of being in public at a bar or something like it, dont you think? Same could be said for streaming music and movie apps as well.

What about things like Yelp? If we trust everyone elses experiences we might miss out on having memorable experiences of our own. I, for one, really enjoy missadventures when they happen. I wouldn't want to miss out if I was told to by another person. Similarly I might in fact enjoy the place that everyone else decries.

I suppose the point that I am trying to make is that if we rely on our apps to solve every great dilema of our lives we might end up missing something important, or if not important, at least enjoyable. Things like tip calculators and GPS might be robbing us of skills that are important to have without needing the assistance of a machine. And lastly if we spend our lives playing Brick Breaker on our phones we might miss out on the world passing us by, and that would be a terrible thing to miss out on.