The Gazette-Enterprise

The number of people who are unemployed or “under-employed” is going to get larger.

Even though the stock market and Wall Street seem to be improving, unemployment is at 10 percent level and if we look at numbers of people who have quit seeking employment or have used up their unemployment pay, the number is even higher.

It seems that every one is distressed over the numbers, but it may be that we are going to have to accept a higher percentage of unemployment than has been acceptable in the past.

In the meantime, we are going to have to do something about how we are educating people. Part of the problem in our unemployment is the very fact that we are training people and not educating them.

Public schools, K-12, generally espouse as one of their goals is to make lifelong learners as students progress through the grades.

Whether they are getting that done can be argued, but it becomes difficult when many of their students have been convinced that they should “be something” by the time they enter high school. As a result, they emphasize courses that will gain them entrance to colleges and universities.

Once they get to trade schools, colleges or universities, their course of study is dictated by the department offering the training for the occupation the student has chosen.

As a result, the student is studying for a job, not an education. The liberal arts take a back seat to the requirements of the department. No longer do you need a grade point average from college courses to gain admission to the department; the student starts out in the department.

As a result of the training that our students are getting, when the employee is faced with the loss of employment in his/her field, he or she is not really ready to begin looking for something entirely different.

He or she will look for work in their trained occupation because they have no idea of how to look for work outside of that occupation.

If this sounds ridiculous, why is the word “underemployed” being used when we talk about the unemployed? If one is working, isn’t one employed?

He or she may be working in an entirely different field, earning less money than was being made in the trained field, and doing a good job, but is classified as underemployed. We are placing the greatest emphasis on what the employee was trained to do at the beginning of employment.

Since we place so much emphasis on having a “degree” we overlook the fact that as the technology of the world grows, we must quit training people and continue to emphasize lifelong learning. We need to do this if we expect to have an unemployment rate that we have had in the past; or if we do not want to change, we are going to have to accept a larger percentage of employment. Industries are also going to have to change their attitudes toward employees. Industries will have to do more of the training rather than expecting the employee to be trained and ready to fulfill the requirements of the company. If industry would accept more of that responsibility, the employee whose job has been eliminated is more willing to stay with the company to be retrained into another field.

America became the great innovative country that it was, not because of training but because of education.

The sooner we return to education and quit being a technological institute for industry, the sooner we will create jobs for a variety of people and talents. If we continue to train for specialties and the need for specialties is reduced, we are going to have higher unemployment than what we can accept.

Jack Linden is a retired history professor and a regular contributor to the Gazette Enterprise editorial page.

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