Re: [Futurework] Future of labor?
Lawry, At 18:35 22/06/2005 -0400, you wrote: Greetings, all A friend sent me an email saying that an Indian member of parliament had declared India to be the worlds back-officeand China its manufacturing center. I wrote back: The Indian member of parliament may have been whistling while walking past the cemetery&China and other Asian countries are underbidding Indian software companies. Very true. I don't think India has much of a chance. Its 'back office' export functions are almost entirely dependent on economic infrastructure elsewhere. They could vanish as quickly as they have arisen. China is not only developing its own software industry -- which will probably take Indian software business away from them -- but it also serves a large range of industry and services at home, which India still has not developed. Furthermore, India still retains its deeply-embedded caste system which makes its job structure even more hour-glass shaped than ours is becomng. It all rolls downhill. I am concerned that many Americans think they are impervious to this, and continue to think we have some corner on innovation or whatever that will always be ours. America never has had a corner on innovation from within its own culture. First of all, in the 19th century it was able to import all the latest technologies and ideas of England and Western Europe. Secondly, its industrial efficiency (due to domestic oilfields) and subsequent prosperity enabled it to recruit the cream of intellectuals and scientists from Europe for most of the last century, together with, in the latter half, many of the best students from Asia. There have hardly been any second- and third-generation American scientists of note. Most of the leading innovators in science and business have been, and are, either foreign-born or first-generation Americans. Instead, people from all over the world are just as smart and just as educated as Americans and, if stereotypes hold true, work harder. So the future is not rosy. As the US continues to make it hard for foreigners to come here for advanced education, the impetus will increase for local universities to improve their offerings. And the smartest of us all derive from a moderately small area which includes Korea and Japan and the coast-line region of north-east China, This was at the end of the longest spur of the migration out of Africa starting about 100,000 years ago where the leading edge had met increasingly severe environmental conditions until finally it met the edge of the receding ice-cap in the above region at about 20,000 years ago. They had become the smartest group -- and had (and still have) correspondingly larger brain sizes than Europeans. For most purposes and most jobs the abilities of Africans, Europeans and Orientals are the same but the Bell curves are displaced respectively slightly to the right. This means that the "genius" tails are very different. The rise of Western Europe out of Medievalism was not only due to native genius (those Enlightenment philosophers who were breaking away from the stranglehold of the Medieval Church) but also of the basic infrastructure of engineering methods which had originally come from China. Almost all the innovations of middle and late Medieval Europe were Chinese. I won't list them here -- they are too numerous. I went to a seminar with Clyde Prestowitz, and he is even more pessimistic. He has just written a book called, IIRC, 3 Billion Enrepreneurs. It is about the astonishing economic rise of India and China and other Asian countries. Perhaps what we will see is first, a global class of very smart AND highly effective people who can land great and well-paying jobs just about anywhere in the world, Yes and, second, settled labor pools all competing against each other in an impoverishing race-to-the-bottom. But not necessarily. The broad mass of the populations of Africa, Europe and Asia are equally competent once their institutions and cultures are receptive enough, and once the innovations of the rare geniuses are to hand. There are still different comparative advantages in every region and, in the future, these will depend on the different sorts of solar technologies that each region can best employ. But competition will be increasingly fierce as long as we depend almost entirely on fossil fuel resources. Keith Which category are we in? Which will our children be in? Cheers, Lawry From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Cordell, Arthur: ECOM Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 2:13 PM To: FUTUREWORK (E-mail) Subject: [Futurework] FW: Some Politics May Be Etched In the Genes Subject: Some Politics May Be Etched In the Genes Health & Fitness; SECTF Some Politics May Be Etched In the Genes 21 June 2005 The New York Times Political scientists have long held that people's upbringing and experience determine their political views. A child raised on peace protests and Bush-loathing generally tracks lef
[Futurework] Why Protection is so much better than free trade
Hi! Wonderful example of the controlled economy in practice. Yet, though I have Inancio Albano on my side, I guess we can’t do much against the power of Lord de Ramsey who, seemingly like many on the Futurework list, is very much against free trade and the free market. Yet, as the Classical Analysts well know (the neo-Classicals haven’t a clue) that if all these EU regulations making rich people richer were abolished, Inancio Albano wouldn’t be better off. However, the Mozambique landlords would be doing even better. No trickledown to help Inancio who would still be thankful to have a job – working a 12 hour day for perhaps a dollar. Hey Gang! How about relieving African countries of their debts and giving them more money? That would surely help Inancio Albano, Wouldn’t it? Harry THE BITTER HARVEST HOW EU SUGAR SUBSIDIES DEVASTATE AFRICA By Maxine Frith, Social Affairs Correspondent Independent 22 June 2005 One is an English aristocrat worth £35m with 9,000 acres and an 18th century manor house; the other earns less than £300 a year cutting sugar cane for 12 hours a day in rural Mozambique to support his parents and four brothers. The link between the two, and the reason why one has continued to increase his wealth while the other faces losing what he has, is the £1.34bn a year EU sugar regime. Aid agencies are calling for reform of a system that costs some of the poorest countries millions of pounds each year in lost trade. The European Commission is to publish proposals today on how it intends to reform EU sugar subsidies, after a ruling by the World Trade Organisation earlier this year that the regime was illegal. But campaigners such as Oxfam say the proposals will not go far enough and will continue to benefit some of the richest farmers in the world at the expense of the poorest. Critics of the system, including the National Farmers' Union, say the system of inflated price guarantees, generous export refunds and high import tariffs surrounding sugar production is the most graphic example of how the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) distorts trade and makes it impossible for African farmers to compete on the international stage. Michael Bailey, a senior policy advisor at Oxfam, said: 'The EU has been caught red-handed providing illegal subsidies to its sugar producers. European sugar policies top the list of trade injustices suffered by Africa and reform is desperately urgent. "Consumers and taxpayers are financing a system which denies African countries the chance to grow out of poverty, while lining the pockets of the European sugar industry." Nowhere are the iniquities of more apparent than when it comes to the lives of John Fellowes and Inacio Albano. John Fellowes, the fourth Lord de Ramsey, receives more than £500,000 a year in CAP subsidies for various crops grown on his three farms in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. In addition, a minimum pricing system run by the CAP guarantees that sugar made from his beet is bought for at least three times more than world prices. Thousands of miles away, Inacio Albano, 25, cuts sugar cane until his hands bleed at a mill in Marremeo, north-east Mozambique but is just thankful to have a job in a country where more than two-thirds of the population live on less than £1 a day. Mozambique is heavily dependent on its sugar industry, but loses more than £20m a year - equivalent to its entire national budget for agriculture and rural development - because of the trade distortions caused by the EU sugar scheme. Landowners in some of the richest parts of Europe, including 7,500 in eastern England, grow sugar beet under quotas set by the European Union but managed by companies such as British Sugar, part of Associated British Foods. For sugar grown within the quotas, a minimum price of €631 (£423) per ton has been set by the EU, below which it cannot be bought by companies that use it for food products or sell it in bags. The guaranteed price within the EU is three times higher than the world price of €157 per ton. Oxfam estimates the price system gives the 27 largest sugar beet farmers in the UK an average of £137,595 a year in support. Production costs of sugar cane in countries such as Mozambique are far lower than in Europe, but they are prevented from importing their products to the EU and benefiting from the higher prices by import tariffs and duties charged on their products. The import duties create a tariff equivalent to 324 per cent on sugar grown outside the EU. The EU does allow some Least Developed Countries (LDCs) such as Mozambique to import sugar to Europe wi
[Futurework] Future of labor?
Greetings, all A friend sent me an email saying that an Indian member of parliament had declared India to be the world’s ‘back-office’ and China its manufacturing center. I wrote back: The Indian member of parliament may have been whistling while walking past the cemetery…China and other Asian countries are underbidding Indian software companies. It all rolls downhill. I am concerned that many Americans think they are impervious to this, and continue to think we have some corner on innovation or whatever that will always be ours. Instead, people from all over the world are just as smart and just as educated as Americans – and, if stereotypes hold true, work harder. So the future is not rosy. As the US continues to make it hard for foreigners to come here for advanced education, the impetus will increase for local universities to improve their offerings. I went to a seminar with Clyde Prestowitz, and he is even more pessimistic. He has just written a book called, IIRC, 3 Billion Enrepreneurs. It is about the astonishing economic rise of India and China and other Asian countries. Perhaps what we will see is first, a global class of very smart AND highly effective people who can land great and well-paying jobs just about anywhere in the world, and, second, settled labor pools all competing against each other in an impoverishing race-to-the-bottom. Which category are we in? Which will our children be in? Cheers, Lawry From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Cordell, Arthur: ECOM Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 2:13 PM To: FUTUREWORK (E-mail) Subject: [Futurework] FW: Some Politics May Be Etched In the Genes Subject: Some Politics May Be Etched In the Genes Health & Fitness; SECTF Some Politics May Be Etched In the Genes 21 June 2005 The New York Times Political scientists have long held that people's upbringing and experience determine their political views. A child raised on peace protests and Bush-loathing generally tracks left as an adult, unless derailed by some powerful life experience. One reared on tax protests and a hatred of Kennedys usually lists to the right. But on the basis of a new study, a team of political scientists is arguing that people's gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly influenced by genetic inheritance. The new research builds on a series of studies that indicate that people's general approach to social issues -- more conservative or more progressive -- is influenced by genes. Environmental influences like upbringing, the study suggests, play a more central role in party affiliation as a Democrat or Republican, much as they do in affiliation with a sports team. The report, which appears in the current issue of The American Political Science Review, the profession's premier journal, uses genetics to help answer several open questions in political science. They include why some people defect from the party in which they were raised and why some political campaigns, like the 2004 presidential election, turn into verbal blood sport, though polls find little disparity in most Americans' views on specific issues like gun control and affirmative action. The study is the first on genetics to appear in the journal. ''I thought here's something new and different by respected political scholars that many political scientists never saw before in their lives,'' said Dr. Lee Sigelman, editor of the journal and a professor of political science at George Washington University. Dr. Sigelman said that in many fields the findings ''would create nothing more than a large yawn,'' but that ''in ours, maybe people will storm the barricades.'' Geneticists who study behavior and personality have known for 30 years that genes play a large role in people's instinctive emotional responses to certain issues, their social temperament. It is not that opinions on specific issues are written into a person's DNA. Rather, genes prime people to respond cautiously or openly to the mores of a social group. Only recently have researchers begun to examine how these predispositions, in combination with childhood and later life experiences, shape political behavior. Dr. Lindon J. Eaves, a professor of human genetics and psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the new research did not add much to this. Dr. Eaves was not involved in the study but allowed the researchers to analyze data from a study of twins that he is leading. Still, he said the findings were plausible, ''and the real significance here is that this paper brings genetics to the attention to a whole new field and gives it a new way of thinking about social, cultural and political questions.'' In the study, three political scientists -- Dr. John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska, Dr. John R. Alford of Rice University and Dr. Carolyn L. Funk of Virginia Commonwealth -- combed survey data from
[Futurework] FW: Some Politics May Be Etched In the Genes
Subject: Some Politics May Be Etched In the Genes Health & Fitness; SECTF Some Politics May Be Etched In the Genes 21 June 2005The New York Times Political scientists have long held that people's upbringing and experience determine their political views. A child raised on peace protests and Bush-loathing generally tracks left as an adult, unless derailed by some powerful life experience. One reared on tax protests and a hatred of Kennedys usually lists to the right. But on the basis of a new study, a team of political scientists is arguing that people's gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly influenced by genetic inheritance. The new research builds on a series of studies that indicate that people's general approach to social issues -- more conservative or more progressive -- is influenced by genes. Environmental influences like upbringing, the study suggests, play a more central role in party affiliation as a Democrat or Republican, much as they do in affiliation with a sports team. The report, which appears in the current issue of The American Political Science Review, the profession's premier journal, uses genetics to help answer several open questions in political science. They include why some people defect from the party in which they were raised and why some political campaigns, like the 2004 presidential election, turn into verbal blood sport, though polls find little disparity in most Americans' views on specific issues like gun control and affirmative action. The study is the first on genetics to appear in the journal. ''I thought here's something new and different by respected political scholars that many political scientists never saw before in their lives,'' said Dr. Lee Sigelman, editor of the journal and a professor of political science at George Washington University. Dr. Sigelman said that in many fields the findings ''would create nothing more than a large yawn,'' but that ''in ours, maybe people will storm the barricades.'' Geneticists who study behavior and personality have known for 30 years that genes play a large role in people's instinctive emotional responses to certain issues, their social temperament. It is not that opinions on specific issues are written into a person's DNA. Rather, genes prime people to respond cautiously or openly to the mores of a social group. Only recently have researchers begun to examine how these predispositions, in combination with childhood and later life experiences, shape political behavior. Dr. Lindon J. Eaves, a professor of human genetics and psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the new research did not add much to this. Dr. Eaves was not involved in the study but allowed the researchers to analyze data from a study of twins that he is leading. Still, he said the findings were plausible, ''and the real significance here is that this paper brings genetics to the attention to a whole new field and gives it a new way of thinking about social, cultural and political questions.'' In the study, three political scientists -- Dr. John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska, Dr. John R. Alford of Rice University and Dr. Carolyn L. Funk of Virginia Commonwealth -- combed survey data from two large continuing studies including more than 8,000 sets of twins. From an extensive battery of surveys on personality traits, religious beliefs and other psychological factors, the researchers selected 28 questions most relevant to political behavior. The questions asked people ''to please indicate whether or not you agree with each topic,'' or are uncertain on issues like property taxes, capitalism, unions and X-rated movies. Most of the twins had a mixture of conservative and progressive views. But over all, they leaned slightly one way or the other. The researchers then compared dizygotic or fraternal twins, who, like any biological siblings, share 50 percent of their genes, with monozygotic, or identical, twins, who share 100 percent of their genes. Calculating how often identical twins agree on an issue and subtracting the rate at which fraternal twins agree on the same item provides a rough measure of genes' influence on that attitude. A shared family environment for twins reared together is assumed. On school prayer, for example, the identical twins' opinions correlated at a rate of 0.66, a measure of how often they agreed. The correlation rate for fraternal twins was 0.46. This translated into a 41 percent contribution from inheritance. As found in previous studies, attitudes about issues like school prayer, property taxes and the draft were among the most influenced by inheritance, the researchers found. Others like modern art and divorce were less so. And in the twins' overall score, derived from 28 questions, genes accounted for 53 percent of the differences. But after correcting for the tendency of politically like-minde
[Futurework] [BrowserCMS] Article from the American Prospect
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (as entered on our Web site) sent this article to you. Comment from sender: 'Risk-shifting is an interesting context for what's happening - perhaps a way to get people thinking about what needs to be done.' Article Title: Fresh Air Article URL: http://www.prospect.org/web/view-web.ww?id=9894 The American Prospect http://www.prospect.org/web ___ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
[Futurework] future of work
Moving Up: Challenges to The American Dream --- Degrees of Separation: As Economy Shifts, A New Generation Fights to Keep Up --- In Milwaukee, Factories Close And Skills, Not Seniority, Are Key to Advancement --- An Ex-Welder's Computer Job 22 June 2005The Wall Street JournalA1English MILWAUKEE -- In 1957, Wayne Hall, then 24 years old, responded to a help-wanted shingle outside Badger Die Casting on this city's south side. He started work the next day, and, over the years, rose from machinery operator to machinery inspector to chief inspector. He helped organize a union, got regular raises, enjoyed generous pension and health benefits and, eventually, five weeks of vacation. At age 72, he is retired and can afford to travel with his wife to Disneyland and Tahiti. It was a typical Milwaukee factory worker's escalator ride to the middle class. His stepson Ron Larson, 58, thought he'd ride that escalator, too. He was wrong. In 1971, Mr. Larson went to work as a welder in the fabrication shop of a factory across the street from Badger that made rock crushers and other heavy equipment. By 1981, he was earning roughly as much as his stepfather. But he was laid off that year. Mr. Larson has held many jobs since -- tour-boat operator, trucker, air-conditioning repairman. Except for one year, he has yet to earn as much as he did at the welding job. Today, he works as a computer support technician, but the contract job runs just six weeks and he doesn't know if he'll still be working after that. "I always believed if you worked hard, your rewards would come," Mr. Larson said earlier this year when he was between jobs. "I said there's no way I'm going to be like that guy sleeping under the bridge, or homeless. Right now I don't think that." The gap between poor and rich in the U.S. has widened over the past 30 years. But people born to modest circumstances are no more likely to rise above their parents' station. The divergent fates of Mr. Hall and his stepson -- and others in this blue-collar city -- illustrate why it can be hard to move up. Industrial jobs that offered steady escalators of advancement for workers, even if they were only high-school graduates, are vanishing in America. In their place are service-economy jobs with fewer ways up. Unions are scarcer and temporary work more common. In newer service jobs that have come to dominate the U.S. economy, a college diploma is increasingly the prerequisite to a good wage. While increased access to college has been a powerful force for mobility, the share of workers with college degrees remains a minority. Moreover, getting a degree is closely correlated with having parents who themselves went to college. Milwaukee was once dotted with factories where thousands worked for good wages -- making electrical generators at Allis-Chalmers Corp., beer at Pabst Brewing Co. and truck bodies at Heil Co. It was the fictional home of TV working girls Laverne and Shirley. The city, says John Gurda, a local historian, was "not just egalitarian but proletarian": It had Socialist mayors from 1910 to 1960. When Wayne Hall proposed in 1957 to Lois Larson, who had three children from a prior marriage, she insisted he get a steady job before they got married. She was the one who spotted the shingle outside Badger on Oklahoma Avenue. "During the good days, Oklahoma Avenue was all factories," he recalls. "You could walk from one shop down Oklahoma Avenue and get a job in another shop." In the past decade, manufacturing's share of employment in Milwaukee has fallen to 16% from around 20%, though that's still above the national average. Mr. Hall's old factory is still on Oklahoma Avenue, but the metal fabrication plant where Mr. Larson worked finally closed last year after withering for decades. One of the plant's former parking lots is now a supermarket where Mr. Larson's wife, Kathy, works. Across the street from the supermarket an old Caterpillar factory is being torn down to make way for a Home Depot. A few miles to the west, the site of the old Heil factory is occupied by Aurora Health Care, a nonprofit corporation that owns hospitals and clinics and is the state's largest private employer. Milwaukee as a whole is solid and there are many conspicuous signs of affluence. Condominiums in two new luxury towers rising on the downtown lakefront sell for $700,000 to $2.5 million. The old Pabst brewery plant downtown, which closed in 1996, is the site of a proposed $317 million shopping, entertainment and residential complex to be called PabstCity. Milwaukee, like the whole country, has experienced a polarization in incomes in recent decades. In 1979, the wealthiest 10% of households in the city earned about six times as much as the bottom tenth, according to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Center for Economic Development. In 1999, they earned nearly 15 times as much. "Deindustrialization has swept away a wh
Re: [Futurework] The future of education
Charles, At 22:16 22/06/2005 +1000, you wrote: Keith Let's get out timing right. I am arguing that 20 years ago auto workers were by and large unskilled and that over the past 20 years their numbers have reduced significantly, but that those who are left are vastly more skilled and better paid. And I know that first hand, I used to work on the Ford production line as a foreman. Ah well, yes. But I was writing originally in the context of most of the workforce. A small proportion of jobs have indeed become highly skilled. I am constantly writing about this skill divide -- this was the whole point of my original posting -- that about 75% of all jobs have become substantially de-skilled (and state schools have thus dumbed down), whereas 25% are becoming more skilled (and why, in England, for example, there are now three consortia entering the fee-paying school arena). Keith Hudson Charles Brass Chairman futures foundation phone:1300 727328 (International 61 3 9459 0244) fax: 61 3 9459 0344 PO Box 122 Fairfield 3078 www.futuresfoundation.org.au the mission of the futures foundation is: "...to engage all Australians in creating a better future..." - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: Charles Brass Cc: futurework@scribe.uwaterloo.ca Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 9:49 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] The future of education Sorry, Charles, but when you worked at Ford in Australia, what job did you have? Did you ever go onto the shop floor? How many workers did you know? How many operations did you have intimate knowledge of? Perhaps Ford in Australia is an entirely different place from Massey-Ferguson in Coventry that I used to know 30 years ago with five large production shops and one assembly shop which I used to visit every day for some years*. Except for workers in the toolroom, there were few jobs that could not be learned in 30 minutes, some in 5. I suggest that you have invalidated your own case by saying that Ford of Australia could take people off the boat. Modern factory workers are far, far, far less skilled than they have ever been. They don't compare, for example, with my blacksmith grandfather who was so fast and skilful that he had two strikers. (*At the time I worked there it was the factory with the largest production of farm tractors in the world and exported 80% of them. On my shift, I was in charge of quality control with responsibilities for the results of most operations from the hardening of the gear wheels to the final lick of paint in the [automated] paint-shop.) "Hugely more skilled"? No, I'm afraid not. The only really skilled people I knew were the metallurgists and chemists I supervised. There was also one old guy who used to ramble around the gear-cutting machines every now and again and I never did discover what his job was until one day a Prof of engineering at Birmingham university came into the shop and asked for him. It turned out that this old man had a little room of his own, slept most of the time except when brewing a pot of tea, and was a recognised expert in gear-cutting and could do things that the Prof couldn't. The old man used to set the gear-cutting machines for the operators. All the latter had to do was to ensure that the cooling solvent hose-pipe was playing over the cutting head. Keith Hudson At 19:40 20/06/2005 +1000, you wrote: in 774 Keith Hudson said (in part) "The reason why such a large part of the education system in the larger countries has become dumbed down is that the majority of the skills required in the job market have also become dumbed down as a result of industrialisation, mass production, automation, computerisation and rationalisation generally by the larger manufacturers (and many services) which increasingly supply the bulk of the staple consumer goods of today's society. For example, the manufacture of a car, which used to take 70 or 80 person-hours within living memory now takes only 25. " Sorry, Keith, but you have got the facts right, but the interpretation wrong. I used to work at Ford Australia in the 1980's when Ford basically took anyone straight off a boat into the plant. Sure, there are now many fewer workers, but they are hugely more skilled, and better paid, than their forebears. Charles Brass Chairman futures foundation phone:1300 727328 (International 61 3 9459 0244) fax: 61 3 9459 0344 PO Box 122 Fairfield 3078 www.futuresfoundation.org.au the mission of the futures foundation is: "...to engage all Australians in creating a better future..." - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2005 6:17 PM Subject: [Futurework] The future of education 747. The future of education In the last few weeks I've been changing my mind about the need for education vouchers. Or, rather, I've been changing my interpretation of what has been the reason why the standard of education in state schools in the lar
Re: [Futurework] The future of education
Keith Let's get out timing right. I am arguing that 20 years ago auto workers were by and large unskilled and that over the past 20 years their numbers have reduced significantly, but that those who are left are vastly more skilled and better paid. And I know that first hand, I used to work on the Ford production line as a foreman. Charles BrassChairmanfutures foundationphone:1300 727328(International 61 3 9459 0244)fax: 61 3 9459 0344PO Box 122Fairfield 3078www.futuresfoundation.org.au the mission of the futures foundation is:"...to engage all Australians in creating a better future..." - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: Charles Brass Cc: futurework@scribe.uwaterloo.ca Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 9:49 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] The future of education Sorry, Charles, but when you worked at Ford in Australia, what job did you have? Did you ever go onto the shop floor? How many workers did you know? How many operations did you have intimate knowledge of? Perhaps Ford in Australia is an entirely different place from Massey-Ferguson in Coventry that I used to know 30 years ago with five large production shops and one assembly shop which I used to visit every day for some years*. Except for workers in the toolroom, there were few jobs that could not be learned in 30 minutes, some in 5. I suggest that you have invalidated your own case by saying that Ford of Australia could take people off the boat. Modern factory workers are far, far, far less skilled than they have ever been. They don't compare, for example, with my blacksmith grandfather who was so fast and skilful that he had two strikers.(*At the time I worked there it was the factory with the largest production of farm tractors in the world and exported 80% of them. On my shift, I was in charge of quality control with responsibilities for the results of most operations from the hardening of the gear wheels to the final lick of paint in the [automated] paint-shop.)"Hugely more skilled"? No, I'm afraid not. The only really skilled people I knew were the metallurgists and chemists I supervised. There was also one old guy who used to ramble around the gear-cutting machines every now and again and I never did discover what his job was until one day a Prof of engineering at Birmingham university came into the shop and asked for him. It turned out that this old man had a little room of his own, slept most of the time except when brewing a pot of tea, and was a recognised expert in gear-cutting and could do things that the Prof couldn't. The old man used to set the gear-cutting machines for the operators. All the latter had to do was to ensure that the cooling solvent hose-pipe was playing over the cutting head.Keith Hudson At 19:40 20/06/2005 +1000, you wrote: in 774 Keith Hudson said (in part)"The reason why such a large part of the education system in the larger countries has become dumbed down is that the majority of the skills required in the job market have also become dumbed down as a result of industrialisation, mass production, automation, computerisation and rationalisation generally by the larger manufacturers (and many services) which increasingly supply the bulk of the staple consumer goods of today's society.For example, the manufacture of a car, which used to take 70 or 80 person-hours within living memory now takes only 25. " Sorry, Keith, but you have got the facts right, but the interpretation wrong. I used to work at Ford Australia in the 1980's when Ford basically took anyone straight off a boat into the plant. Sure, there are now many fewer workers, but they are hugely more skilled, and better paid, than their forebears. Charles BrassChairmanfutures foundationphone:1300 727328(International 61 3 9459 0244)fax: 61 3 9459 0344PO Box 122Fairfield 3078www.futuresfoundation.org.au the mission of the futures foundation is:"...to engage all Australians in creating a better future..." - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2005 6:17 PM Subject: [Futurework] The future of education 747. The future of education In the last few weeks I've been changing my mind about the need for education vouchers. Or, rather, I've been changing my interpretation of what has been the reason why the standard of education in state schools in the larger developed countries has become increasingly dumbed down. I still think that education vouchers will be inevitable in several countries such as England and America, and the short item below from today's Independent on Sunday concerning the growing amount of extra private tuition being paid for by parents of state schoolchi
