Hey, are you old enough to remember when Popular Science et al (the following ad came from Science and Mechanics, the April 1950 edition) was filled with such ads? There were 50,000 ways to make money by getting training in electrical work, radio and television repair, shoe repairs, sharpening saw blades, air conditioning repair, heating installation and much more.
"How to make money with simple cartoons" "Learn meat-cutting" "Learn to mount birds and animals" "Learn watch making, jewelry repair" "Draw Me! Copy this girl and try for $1,200 in prizes"
There seemed to be the attitude that you could learn and then earn your way to a better life back then. I'm sure some of them were doubtful schemes. My favorite involves growing frogs in your backyard for a New Orleans concern that canned frogged legs.Yummy!
Today informercials want you to buy real estate systems to teach you how to buy and sell houses without risking any money. Yeah. The pathways to the middle class seems to have been grown over.
Interestingly enough in the Springfield area there are about 300 positions in the area's precision tooling companies that are going unfilled because there aren't enough trained people for those positioned. The area manufacturers have actually worked in collaboration with area trade school to create programs that would produce a group of young employees to go onto paid apprentice programs.
And I've been told repeatedly there are many jobs in the healthcare field here that go unfilled as well for the same reason.
Where has the drive to want to succeed gone?
I meet young people whose ambition impresses me and who I know will be a success in their chosen field. But then there's the group of kids who hang out at the house next door, smoking those fruit-flavored blunts (yeah) and talking trash. What is their future?
© 2008 by Gordon Michael Dobbs
1 comment:
I too see young people, late teens, that are so driven to succeed. Then I see the others that excel at school and then don't perform when they don't have to. Come home from school for the Summer and their a lump on the couch for three months.
Post a Comment