Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Right-Wing Bigot Ramps Up Attacks On Education" video.

Sorry this is long, but I think you'll find this interesting. I'm Australian but went to college in America (late 80s). Both my parents were high school teachers. In the 1970s Australia was importing American high schoolteachers because for a while we had a shortage. So I basically grew up around school teachers. One thing I noticed when I was in America in the late 80s was that America's education system was already showing signs it was sliding. I remember commenting on it to my professor one day and he told me that was BS. We just happened to be in the department office at that moment and one of the secretaries interrupted him and asked my professor if he was right then he should explain why her kids needs tutors in English, Math and Science. Back here in Oz I befriended a couple on the mid 90s. He was American she's Australian and both of them are high school teachers. So again I was around school teachers and I can tell you for a fact Australia has also STARED to SLIDE. Right now in Australia we have a significant skills shortage in things like welders, machinists, electricians,....etc. I am an engineer (aerospace) who works in industrial control systems and automation. The problem is WAY WORSE than people think. It actually goes back to the influence of the Chicago School Economics that was called Reaganomics in America, Thatcherism in Britain and Economic Rationalism in Australia. We now (collectively) call it neoliberalism. I was looking into it because its had a massive effect on engineering in areas like infrastructure and energy. If I try and explain either of those things it will take pages. Suffice to say Bidens $3 Trillion Build Back Better wasn't going to work because its really needs to be about $20 Trillion. The $1.2 Trillion Inflation reduction Act is like trying to put out a raging forest fire with a bucket. The real problem the Neoliberals have cause that's going to make everything that needs being done with infrastructure and energy is they have MASSIVELY interfered in education as well. I saw Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs) describe how American kids with a 6 month welding course at a community college are getting more money than the average college graduate BECAUSE of the shortage of welders. WE HAVE EXACTLY the same issue here in Australia. The Neoliberal economists flipped our education in the 1990s and instead of training the people we actually need to keep a modern society working we sent 80% of our kids off to universities to get a lot of useless degrees. In a single generation we went form 20% to 80% of our high school graduates going to college WITHOUT ever asking what that meant. Our Economists simply said we were flipping from a manufacturing base to a service industry base AND NOBODY ASKED what that meant. In 2005 I was on a mine site and asked how they were going with the skills shortage. The shift supervisor simply turned to me and said that if I had a welding ticket (fully qualified from a 4 year apprenticeship) he'd pay me $X and $X was $50K more than I was on at the time. At that time I had 15+ years experience and was told a kid almost 1/2 my age with a welding ticket was worth $50K more a year. 15 Years after that Mike Rowe is saying that American kids at 18 or 19 with a BASIC welding ticket are worth more than a college graduate. YEAH all those economists who decided to re-wire Western Society back in the 80s, 90s and 2000s really did a number on us all. AND HERE'S the killer problem. Every generation since the start of civilisation needed people who could teach the next generation and that was irrespective of what their society actually did. It didn't matter if they were into farming or fighting they still needed black smiths and carpenters. The moment that any society forgot to teach the next generation they were done. Go look at any empire in history. They became empires because they had skill sets that enabled them to expand. The moment they stopped training those skill sets they collapsed. Here's our problem across the entire Western Developed World - we stopped valuing teachers and as such we have LOST an entire generation of teachers. That has also included the people who can train teachers. So getting that back is a monumental task. Go and ask your mother how Texas expects to TRAIN the next generation of teachers? FYI - If you ask that in Australia it clears the room faster than David Copperfield can make stuff disappear. Again sorry for the long long long blurb, but education is a damn serious issue that NOBODY wants to tackle.
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