Back in the 50s and 60s only about 10% of the population went to college. For the most part they studied whatever interested them and plenty of them chose the humanities. Most of the graduates who entered the work force after college were, of course, men. Women had few options other than nurse, teacher, or secretary. It didn't matter if graduates had majored in English, History, or even art, the bigger employers ran their own training programs which introduced the best new employees to their business cultures and practices and they preferred 'well-rounded' young men who could write a decent letter, speak properly, hold their own in lively conversation, dress well enough and exhibit good manners. This doesn't mean that the majority of kids had good grammar school and high school educations. They didn't. Most were quite illiterate and aimed for a good factory job at best, or looked to the required military service for technical training. Only the best prepared -- and most representative of a white-collar middle class -- went to college and thus were all but preselected for American business regardless of their academic specialties. Being without family I had to work right away after college. I was hired as a copywriter even though I had majored in art. Then after a few years I became a corporate advertising manager and was on a fast track for a job with bespoke suits, fancy cars, model girlfriends, and plenty of cash. Nobody ever asked me if I had studied advertising in school or had any training in writing ads, etc. If I had not quit business and gone to grad school and then to teaching art, I probably would've had a successful career as an advertising or corporate executive.
Nowadays it's much different. English majors and History majors can't get entry jobs in business. Art grads are fashionable -- somewhat -- because the buzz is that they know how to think creatively. (Very dubious). More than 30% of young people now finish college (and 20% of those are still illiterate and narrow, I think). Business no longer run their own training programs (thanks to the community college). They want new employees to know what to do the first day. wc ________________________________ From: Michael Brady <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, February 9, 2013 10:47:31 AM Subject: Re: Skills children learn from the arts On Feb 9, 2013, at 11:14 AM, saulostrow <[email protected]> wrote: > very english Public School and ivy thinking - not very American public > school were literacy was the goal "... where literacy was the goal." and later > Actually, what seems to have done this was the destruction of the middle > classes who once thought education was not only a way to get ahead but to > improve one's self - sometime in the 70s when the middle classes because > they were the only one with economic reserves became economically > vulnerable as such improving oneself came to mean preserving oneself > economically - the irony is that today, education does not guarantee one > will do better than their parents So it comes down to a Marxist view of history in terms of economic struggles? Or do you mean the 70s, when the 60s radicals began to get faculty positions in high schools and colleges and to promote the notion that "right" and "wrong" answers are social constructs that only serve to sustain the hegemony of privilege? That preferences of grammatical forms and logical arguments are social discriminators that promote the racist subtext of society? That effort and intent are equivalent to results? That rote work in school is conditioning the drones for the assembly line? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
