I did well academically, and after 11 years of school and 2 years of college in London, I went on to complete a 5-year laurea magistrale in jurisprudence (master’s law degree) at university in Rome at university. This amounted to 11 years of compulsory education, 2 years of further education and 5 years of higher education and at the end of it I had the title dottoressa (doctor) and had a qualifying law degree. So after 18 years of education and another 18 months earning as a trainee lawyer, I was admitted to the bar as an avvocatessa (lawyer). So I’m one of the people who the education has supposedly benefited but most the girls I went to school with didn’t go on to university. Nationally, 65% of school leavers don’t go on and graduate from university. So for the majority of school leavers education has been a complete waste of time because they will leave school with no meaningful qualifications.
When teachers tell schoolgirls that they won’t go far in life in they don’t pay attention in school they are lying. Quite frankly, an attractive girl can earn far more from porn, prostitution or stripping than she could as a teacher, and because men still earn more than women, most girls will end up living off their husband or boyfriend income, and most single mums live off the state or the fathers of their children. So if teachers were being honest they would tell schoolgirls that for the majority of them it doesn’t matter if they pay attention at school because they are sitting on their future source of income. For some reason educators refuse to admit that the majority of school kids (male and female) would benefit from a vocational or sports based education. I mean, Heaven forfend, that school kids should actually learn a trade or skills that might be useful to them in later life.
I was raised in a family that placed a lot more value on life skills, learning trade, tradition and sport than they did on education. They weren’t anti education but they understood that academic study doesn’t count for much in the real world. My Mama taught me and my sister, ballet, Sicilian folk dancing and how to cook, clean and iron; and we were encouraged to fence and do judo by my Dad — we’re both I’m a qualified ballet teachers and I’m a fencing coach and my sister is a black belt in judo. Both my brothers did wrestling, boxing, judo, rugby, football and shooting, and were taught how to be blacksmiths and auto and motorcycle mechanics by my father. They were also taught to ride motorcycles and drive cars, LGVs, dump trucks and operate heavy machinery. Me and Rob both took the academic route and my other brother and sister didn’t but for all of us, what we all learned from our parents was far more important than what we learned at school.
Universal education doesn’t have to mean every kid being forced into an academic education. For some kids, obviously, an academic education is best, and that’s fine, but that’s no reason why other kids should be denied the opportunity of leaving school as qualified dancers, sports coaches, blacksmiths, carpenters, welders, stone masons, plumbers, mechanics, roofers, scaffolders, steel erector, panel beaters, crane operators, chefs, seamstresses or electricians.
Scaffolder!!!!!!! With all those other options you’d have to be a right waster to take scaffolding. Since when’s that been a trade? If that’s a trade, so’s hod carrier, docker, rigger and driver’s mate.
Seriously, metal fabricator, sheet metal worker, CNC machinist and even boilermaker are things you could feasible learn at school, and definitely at a work placement. In woodwork, instead of learning joinery and about endless different types of wood that you’re never going to make anything out of, it would have been much more useful learning carpentry from a retired chippie who worked on building sites or kitchen and cabinet making. Even if you don’t want to do that for a living every geezer has a wife, mother, sister or girlfriend, who going to want a new kitchen.
@ rob
Scaffolding and hod-carrying aren’t skilled trades but they are still trades. You did hod-carrying didn’t you?
@ Stefi
Yeah, it was alright.
So Rob you’re a blacksmith? See, that’s what my Dad thought but I said I thought you were a steelworker. He didn’t think a steelworker could make some of the things you made.
I’ve never been a steel worker, which is either a CNC machinist who use computers and lasers to machine metal or sheet metal workers who use heavy equipment to machine metal. I’m a blacksmith by trade but not profession. My Dad, uncle, Grandad and basically as far back as I know on that side of the family were blacksmiths but the trade changed and became a lot of other professions. I’m also a qualified metal fabricator, welder, boilermaker, hyperbaric welder, which are all interrelated disciplines. Danny’s a qualified mechanic but his main gig is panel beating, which is a highly skilled metal work discipline. Amica’s Dad started off as a manual demolition worker, the he became a blaster, wrecking ball operator, and crane operator. That why I can make things and Amica can break things.
My family worked on the dock as welders, so they were also shipswrights and boilermakers, but when the work dried up, the dockers and stevedores had no trade to full back on but my family could adapt their metal work skills and work in construction as steel erectors, steel fixers or fence erectors, armourers (making illegal silencers) or mechanics. Obviously, they moved in another direction with the bouncing, the illegal raves and the club scene, and the other side of my family where smuggling alcohol, tobacco and firearms. But even the gyms that my family run, everything in them we’ve made. One of the gyms itself is made out of two shipping containers.
What does your Dad do?
Stef. Everyone is so obsessed with going to college here. I don’t think the soccer moms want their children to be blue collar.
@ heather
I think you’re absolutely right and it’s a shame.
HI Stefi I love this post. I think you are really on to something here. Back in 1986 when our family moved to East Tennessee, the town we moved to was thriving with industry. Magnavox had the largest television assembly plant in the United States in our home town of Greeneville. Newport news shipbuilding had a large assembly plant where everything small enough to be welded together and placed on a railroad flatcar and shiped to the coast was assembled. It was later installed in navy vessels (mostly los angeles class submarines). Basically the area had an abundance of skilled labor and more importantly, it had JOBS!!!
As the years went on; however, parents insisted that their kids must go to college and get a degree in something, anything at all. So, the High schools closed many of the trade classes and we were not turning out the welders, electronics workers and other people with the valuable skills needed for industry. As a result when these people retired the industry left. So did the jobs. A town that was once thriving has been left as a town where the largest employer is a state facility that cares for the mentally disabled. Our next largest employer is Wal-Mart.
Don’t get me wrong, we have a lot of highly educated people. You can go to the hardware store and get your paint mixed by a girl with a masters in psychology and one of the local office supply store salesman has a Ph.D. The trouble is no one is working in the profession they studied for. All of these professions only truly exist in a society that makes things. America has lost this ability and it is really starting to bring everything else down. We have lost the concept that society really does rest on the backs of the blue collar worker, once we lose them we are gone.
Hi Rob, I envy your wide repetoire of skills. I am a novice at welding (my real profession is as a mathematician), but I must confess that other than shooting I find working with steel to be an exciting activity.
@ Wyatt
Thanks. The same is true in the UK. There is such a dearth of skilled labourers that in London starting salaries are around £32,000 ($51,500) and at the top end it’s not unusual to find them earning in excess of £90,000 ($145,000). They are earning a lot more than most graduates, so anyone thinking of spending £27,000 ($43,500) on a three-year degree course, who could realistically expect a starting salary of £20,000 ($32000), might want to consider approaching a skilled tradesmen to see if they will take them on as an unpaid apprentice. The amount of people taking law degrees shows that students aren’t thinking this through. Law is an over subscribed. Most law graduates don’t go on to become lawyers and even experienced barristers London can only realistically expect to earn £65,000 ($100,000)and solicitors a lot less. It’s strange because when I was a young kid my Dad couldn’t afford to buy me the bmx bike I wanted but he said he would make me a better one and he did. He picked up an old bmx at a scrap yard to get an idea of the frame then he constructed and welded a much lighter bike for me and painted it in Rosso Corsa and put Ferrari badges on it.
@ Wyatt
I love welding but my real passion is smithing. I don’t know whether you use the term panel beater in America, but they work on car bodies doing repairs or restorations. Danny rents out Italian supercars but he used to specialise in restoring classic Italian sports cars and motorcycles. That’s pretty special. We were doing that as kids because my old man and uncle were always working on cars and motorbikes and Danny’s Dad was a mechanic. So we would go down the breaker’s yard looking for write-offs to work on. We also used to do motocross, trials, enduros, hill climbs and circuit races as kids and with motocross, trials and enduro bikes you have to do a lot of maintenance on them, so we got a lot of experience working on engines.
@ Rob
We call them auto body mechanics.
@ Heather
They beat panels so we call them panel beaters.
@stephi
What is hod-carrying?
@ Wyatt
A hod is three sided box, stuck on top of pole but tilted at a diagonal. It’s for carrying bricks and mortar. A hod-carrier carries the hod up a ladder or scaffolding or just across a site. So it’s not really a skilled trade because all you’ve got to be is strong, fit, agile and good head for heights but it does take some technique. It’s also a tough gig because it’s a 1000 bricks per day per brickie (brick layer) and a good hod carrier serves three brickies at once (3000+ bricks). So you’re running on the site, climbing up the ladders and sliding down. It’s also a very good way of making money when you’re 16 years old and pretty good for strength and conditioning. It also gets pretty boring. I could do it for a day but I preferred welding but it depended what work was on offer.
I no have the education but for me is no problem. I can read and write good enough. My Papa was the assassin, kidnapper and gun smuggler in war with fascists. Before this he’s family goat herders and poacher. He pass on to me but not goat herder because this job shit. He also teach to me how be dog handler and to fight with a knife. I good enough at mend or build things but I no have the skills Rob has with his hands. Rob’s Papa he very good iron artisan.
@ Pietro
To be fair, assassination, kidnapping, smuggling, and poaching aren’t really the sort of trades that you could teach st school.
@rob
Thank you, I think I may have seen one of these in a picture of brick layers building a wall. It has got to be an exhausting job, and really tough on the arms.
@ Wyatt
Everywhere aches afterwards but because the pole sits on top of your belt and rests on your upperbody, it’s not too bad on the arms. It’s worse on the legs, especially the calf muscles. Put it this way I have earned easier money.