Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
There's a reason more people don't gravitate towards the trades, and it's not because of teachers or guidance counselors. It's because it's usually pretty physically demanding (and sometimes dangerous) work in often uncomfortable conditions. And even if you're OK with those things, most trades still require skills, talent, and intelligence that not everyone is capable of.
Thinking that anyone can be suited for trades work and they're just too brainwashed to realize what they're missing out on is as tone deaf as people telling out of work coal miners to "learn to code".
And honestly, one of the biggest obstacles is some of the people in the trades themselves. Just like with police or prison guards, the jobs are sometimes self-selecting in terms of the type of personalities they tend to attract. If you want to attract more people to the field, then changing the whole attitude and atmosphere is one place to start. A lot of journeymen/companies are great for apprentices to work under, but way too many have awful safety standards (this is particularly bad in residential construction), tolerate hazing and verbal abuse of apprentices, and seem to think that screaming at employees is a great way to motivate them. I know multiple people who started as apprentices or pre-apprentices and ended up changing fields because they couldn't stand that atmosphere.
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I think we focus too much on the trades, and not enough in STEM, and with both we think those are the only jobs available which isn't necessarily true.
I think the point is there are fields with lots of unfilled jobs, whether that be the trades, STEM or anything else, but our education system is failing miserably in filling those jobs.
Personally I think the approach of telling kids they are special and should do what the love (hello Liberal arts degree) is a guise in elitism and has failed our society miserably. It is also the reason we have higher levels of unemployment among young people, why kids live with their parents longer, cannot afford a house, higher levels of depression, suicide, etc.
Do we actually need more evidence as to why our current education system and the corrupt fools that run it need to be kicked to the curb?
Even in this thread where I think we all agree that it is an issue, we still have ol' Lanny telling everyone why the 4 year debt laden post secondary degree is still necessary, when in fact more and more companies are trending away from this. But hey, lets not listen to Google, one of the biggest employers of the STEM field. They don't know what they are talking about.
Ignoring of course the fact that Google consistently trends highest among happiest employees, most desirable places to work, highest compensated, etc, etc. Those evil bastards. How dare they suggest my special post secondary degree can be replaced with a 6 month online certification that can be completed for $400.
