Lack of education is a significant part of this. Military (as well as police and fire) are readily available routes out of poverty for many of the poor. Ditto many apprentice programs. Usually they need a high school diploma. Too few of those seeking a better life fail to stay in school.
Todays military is more technical and requires more skill than the old days of sitting in a foxhole. Remind kids to stay in school and get that diploma. Then others will help you train for job skills.
I tutored a 23 year old man, a high school graduate, in an Adult Literacy program. He was handsome, fit and personable. His great ambition was to join the Army.
The armed forces administer extensive tests to recruits to assign them to the myriad different potential jobs according to aptitude. Although the young man I tutored had graduated from high school he was functionally illiterate and couldn’t pass the Army’s reading test. He wasn’'t stupid – he held a job in a car repair shop and passed the Army’s mechanical aptitude test.
I gave up on this young man after about 4 sessions. He had probably received professional help during his schooling and was beyond my ability to help.
In an earlier era, when warriors didn’t need to use sophisticated weapons, this young man would have excelled in the Army.
It is very important for anyone intending a military career today to be able to read competently.
Wendy
“Fit” eh? An athlete in High School, football or basketball? Athletes seem to get a pass any other sort of standards, in high school and college.
When I was in college in the 70s, there was a series in the student newspaper about the corruption in the athletic department, particularly the football program. Counselors were talking about football recruits who they were guiding through registration. The counselor would get the guy set up with some easy freshman “general ed” classes that everyone was required to take. One of the assistant ADs would grab the kid, take him away, and when the kid got back to the counselor, his classes had been changed to a couple remedial reading classes, with teachers that the athletic department could depend on to give the kid a passing grade, whether he did any course work or not, to maintain his “NCAA academic qualification” to play.
It would not surprise me at all that a high school, or college, graduate would be a functional illiterate.
Steve
Back then it was probably mostly just football. But as the Varsity Blues scandal has shown the cancer has spread all over and includes professional SAT test takers, etc.
Mike
The irony was, while the university’s athletic department was carrying on like it was a football powerhouse full of NFL bound recruits, the reality was the football team was terrible, only winning one game one year, against other second rate colleges.
McDonald’s used to sponsor a high school graduate award program. The logo for the award had “scholar” in tiny print, and “athlete” in huge print.
The system has only gotten more corrupt since then. A football player at a Detroit high school was convicted of assault, twice, and did jail time. All the media nattered about was how the criminal convictions might impact his college football career.
Steve
Well, he did beat the most powerful military on the planet at the time with a ragtag group of fighters lacking military supplies and more.
Sure, his tactics were lacking (he turned retreating into an art form), but his leadership was superb, and that was enough to win the day.
And, he provided fodder for one of Lincoln’s funnier stories:
Ethan Allen returned to England after the war, and the British made fun of him. One day they put a picture of George Washington in an outhouse where Allen would be sure to see it. He used the outhouse but said nothing about the picture. Then the British asked him about it and Allen said it was a very appropriate place for an Englishman to hang the picture because “nothing will make an Englishman shat so quick as the sight of General Washington.”
AW
AW,
The revolution used the first industrial age great depression in England taking advantage of hard times. Just going into retreat tied up the Brits with endless costs shipping their men around for nada. Almost like us defending the moon distance wise if the Chinese were building a competing base next door to ours. Too much energy out.
The main thing Washington’s troops might have loved about him, he did not get them killed needlessly. That should be an American thing. No pride lost of living…and living well.
Mostly, it is not laziness or etc of individuals, but rather the increasingly idiotic, frightened (the milk carton children syndrome), demeaning (low low expectation except for athletics and sex), and depressing status rathat then merit orientation of our society.
Want to help a friend or familiar lose weight? Get them to hang out with skinny people. The change of social surround is often miraculous, but most cannot because their old set of sickly friends are too valuable to them.
david fb
Re: Diploma but can’t read.
We do hear stories of schools that water down requirement to boost their graduation numbers. That promote students to the next grade even though they didn’t have passing grades. The student is not traumatized by failure but does he/she get the help they need? May be doing them no favors.
Yes, the army learned in WWI that some are much easier to train as say radio operators than others. They were early adopters of apptitude testing.
When i was drafted, we sent a week in orientation gets shots, uniforms and doing those tests. They say the under scoring draftees often became truck drivers. Not the kind of person you want behind you with an M-16.
All volunteer army lets them more often require that diploma. But with many job openings out there recruiting must not be easy. So more likely to grant waivers to fill quotas.
Meanwhile, voluntary minimum standards, like Common Core, are demagogued as “big gummit interference”. Seems that ignorance is a national priority to some.
Steve
Steve,
People like their lies.
A big mistake was made when the Public Schools started deemphasizing Shop ( Trades ) classes, I hope they rethink that.
Spending all or most of their energy and focus on getting the students to learn enough to pass tests. There are “skill center” campuses that serve multiple counties, at least in the areas I’m familiar with, but back in the old days of the 60’s,70’s, and 80’s, the large public high schools that I was familiar with had their own shop equipment and teachers.
Not every kid wants to go to college, but they sure are steered that way. American society will pay the price for that short sightedness.
Hey Up North Joe -
Our score.org Chapter is starting to partner with trade schools in the area to offer them some business training in addition to their technical trade education. One thing we are noticing is that while the trade schools offer the technical training, they generally leave the “business” part out. Kind of crazy nowadays to not include some type of “Business 101” classes to these future business owners.
OTOH - I learned from a colleague that his son who has a very large commercial plumbing business has hired a teacher and is now offering classes to folks who want to become licensed plumbers. He cannot find qualified people to work at his business.
It’s a 5 year commitment to become a licensed plumber. As part of the agreement, he will buy each pupil the tools that they need and as long as they stay for 6 months, the tools are theirs to keep. He does not want them to get any business training as he fears that if they get some folks that are entrepreneurial, they will get their license and compete. 
Interesting times!!
'38Packard
I don’t know how widespread that is, outside of Michigan. Here, it’s probably as much a part of the defunding of education as anything else. I shudder to think what the liability insurance costs for wood and metal shop classes costs.
I may have mentioned before, a coworker was asking around for driving school recommendations. Her spawn went to Livonia Public. I went blink “I had driver’s ed at Kalamazoo Public. Public schools don’t teach driver’s ed anymore?” I don’t know if it’s universal through the state, but that is certainly the case in Livonia, not even an elective. More education defunding to pay for “JC” tax cuts.
Steve
same here, I took drivers ed via the large public high school I went to, was taught in the summer before junior year, and was taught by a high school teacher making some extra bucks for a summer gig. It was no charge to the students. Complete the class, get a learner’s permit that allowed you to drive with adult supervision for a probationary period, and then if no accidents got a drivers license.
Drivers Ed has been privatized everywhere in Michigan that I’ve been.
There is a major shortage of trades people in general. Pluming, electrical, HVAC, etc. There are not nearly enough workers to fill projected demand.
That is awesome ! Nice that they are filling a need, same for the plumber entrepreneur you mentioned.
It is pretty much everywhere. Since the move to standardized testing, schools can only afford to teach classes that help students pass the test. Wood shop doesn’t qualify, and neither does driver’s ed.
A lot (at least some) schools are bringing back their wood & metals shops to teach robotics. They add a CAD class, 3D printers and sometimes CNC machines and they compete in the F.I.R.S.T. robotics competitions.
Mike
That points not just to a problem with education and job training. It points to a demographic problem as well. Simply put, we don’t have enough young people, period, to fill job demands going further. And this problem exists in most countries. Some far worse than others.
I’ll put another spin on this. When I graduated college in 1989, Comp Sci degree with a healthy does of EE (so that we knew how these processors that we were programmed actually worked), I hired into Texas Instruments. I had a training regimen that would last 12-18 moths and include rotations. Seven years later I move to Motorola, and they had a very similar system still (circa '96). Fast-forward, I’m at Oracle around 2013-2014, and we have two new college grads (master’s degrees) and my boss is complaining after 4 weeks that they are not yet contributing in a meaningful manner.