Education, Trades & Debt

That ding-dong Elizabeth on The View opened her mouth again today and said “I refuse to believe” . . . that’s your first mistake Elizabeth; refusing to believe is not any way to start a hot topic.  She missed the whole point of Barbara Walters’ item on New York City’s mayor speaking about the fact that it is not shameful to opt out of college and choose instead a trade as a career.  Elizabeth went off on a tangent to say that college is the only way “to better your class” and right away I thought “but isn’t America supposed to be classless”?  Oops Elizabeth, there goes another illusion for the American people.  Barbara tried to set her straight by remarking that the major was being uplifting towards those who chose to work in a trade rather than go on to college.  Not putting them down, which Elizabeth so blatantly did when she opened her mouth and refuse to believe.

       Decades ago both my parents wondered why Canada had so few apprenticeship programs.  They recognized that not all children are disposed to continue on with their studies and that this lack of interest had nothing to do with lack of intelligence.  Some people (male or female) will be much happier pursuing a trade rather than struggling through 12 years of public school and then another 6 or 7 years in order to, possibly, get a professional career in medicine, law, engineering, education and so on.  Today we have a dismal lack of experienced trades such as plumbing, electricians, welders, mechanics, millwrights, shoemakers, and so on. 

       The other point Mayor Bloomberg made was that by going into the trades the debt level of the individual would be much less.  The amount of debt students carry today is staggering and shameful.  Canada and America both need to get a grip on the cost of university and college educations; it is out of this world expensive and completely unreasonable to have young people start their careers with such a huge debt load. 

       Let’s bring industry back to North America and let’s get our people working in meaningful, well paying jobs.  And taxes will follow.