Needed now and next decade: Electricians, roofers, plumbers

[Igel]

30. Cultural divide.

If you're low SES, you pick on the geeks and nerds. You don't see a reason for being like that and don't want to be like that.

If you're educated, you think that everybody has to be like you and has to go to college and get your degree in post-modern interdisciplinary approaches to Nweh art.

Career pathways to skilled blue-collar work are cut off. Community college and high schools lost the programs. Emphasis was on high tech jobs and college. That's the role model, even if it's not for everybody.

What's left are students who ridicule both the plumbers and the nerds.

If you go to a diverse school--depending where it is and who it serves--and check into vocational classes, you see a big race bias at work. They're electives, students sign up for them, so they're self-selected. And often self-segregated. Many minorities choose early release over vocational training, heading off to free time or minimum-wage jobs instead of learning to be a mechanic or welder.