|
Dropouts an untapped resource
The Winnipeg Free Press
Focus, Thursday, May 26, 2005, p. a17
Dallas Hansen
DURING a recent trip downtown, I lost my wallet -- including my
passport. Probably it had fallen from my pocket onto the sidewalk while
I was skateboarding. Cursing my own irresponsibility, I prayed someone
honest would find and return it.
Next day a homeless man named Willard called for me at the Free Press.
He had found my wallet.
After compensating Willard for his trouble, I realized how easily
people can be underestimated. Here was a man of no fixed address who
had applied deductive reasoning and will sufficient to turn a find on
the street into a legitimate day's earnings.
Willard deserves the opportunity to survive based on such qualities of
mind -- not obligatory handouts and subsidized idleness. Money and life
thus take on new meaning.
Organizations
At the beginning of the 20th century, large organizations and their
strict hiring prerequisites barely existed -- most men and women worked
for small firms. But in coming decades, the ascendancy of the
organization and its effects on the labour market would change the face
of the inner city.
In 1950, $5 was a typical monthly rate at Winnipeg's numerous
single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels, then a starting point for European
immigrants who saved to buy houses. But in 2005, SRO hotels -- such as
the McLaren on Main Street, from where Willard phoned about my wallet
-- are seen as an end-of-the-road.
Beyond a Front Desk: The Residential Hotel as a Home, a 2005 report by
the University of Winnipeg's Institute of Urban studies, shows that
about one-third of Winnipeg's approximately 1,000 SRO hotel residents
(nearly 10 per cent of the total population downtown) are in some way
employed -- usually as unskilled, temporary labourers.
Modern conventional wisdom says that failing to complete post-secondary
education means a lifetime of consignment to the pool of unskilled
labour. Yet, for many reasons, a good percentage of high school
students never graduate; in some inner-city neighbourhoods, the
majority don't.
Paul Goodman, a mutli-disciplinary 20th-century academic, noted in his
1964 essay The Deadly Halls of Ivy that in 1900 the high school
graduation rate in the United States was just six per cent.
"But who were the 94 per cent who did not graduate? Obviously they were
not 'dropouts.' "
Goodman mentions a boy who had left school during seventh grade.
Working as an office boy at an architect's, he learned draftsmanship,
and under the mentorship of adult peers studied French and mathematics
-- leading to an esteemed career in architecture that brought him a
Beaux Arts prize. And, inventors, politicians, shopkeepers, and
journalists working in the early 20th century likely never received
formal training and accreditation.
"For most students," writes Goodman, "schooling prevents education. It
destroys initiative and the relation to society that education is
supposed to be about." Rather than gravitating toward natural interests
and learning through experience, the modern student is expected to cram
textbook knowledge before regurgitating it onto examinations.
Besides his ideas for technical apprenticeships and FDR-esque public
beautification projects, Goodman suggested the creation of "hundreds,
perhaps thousands of little theatres, little magazines, independent
local papers, unaffiliated radio stations" to provide work for "the
nonacademic who are especially bright and talented."
Winnipeg-born author George Woodcock, himself having never attended
university, spent decades as a professor of political science at the
University of British Columbia. Canadian journalist and author Robert
Fulford never finished high school. Given their intellectual
achievements, isn't it reasonable to consider that one might not need
schooling, just on-the-job practise, to learn truck-driving, office
administration, graphic design, computer programming, or automobile
repair?
Conversion
Whereas other cities, such as Vancouver, have seen the conversion of
some SROs into backpackers ' hostels, Winnipeg's SRO dwellers would be
better served if residential hotels were perceived not as a dead end,
but as a launching point.
Many SRO-dwellers are satisfied with where they live. When asked, "What
is liked most about living in a hotel?" 30 per cent of the University
of Winnipeg study's respondents mentioned convenience -- namely, the
convenience of being downtown, on a pedestrian level, for as the report
observes, "Many (residents) view the street as their living room."
While institutional grants, job subsidy programs, and compulsory
workplace training can provide no permanent answer to the problems of
unemployment and poverty in the inner city, apprenticeships can. Youths
and young adults who leave school are likelier not to join gangs if
they can find a welcoming mentor. Our greatest untapped economic
resource just might be the dropouts.
Category: Editorial and Opinions
Uniform subject(s): Education; Economic conditions and economic policies
Length: Medium, 610 words
© 2005 Winnipeg Free Press. All rights reserved.
www.dallashansen.com |
|
|
|
