The Bond Issue. Modern technical and vocational training.

I've posted on the upcoming bond issue here several times before, but I want to switch gears a bit with this post, as I think that perhaps part of the story has been missed, and even when not missed, perhaps the need isn't fully appreciated.  That need is for scientific and technical training, and this bond issue would fund a Science and Technology Center as part of the high school facilities for the district.

The need for something like this has been identified by those in the know for some time, but I don't know how widely that need is appreciated in the general public.  It's really pressing.

Years and years ago, "technical" training was available in most high schools, and of course it's never gone away.  Prior to World War Two a very high percentage of American men never graduated from high school, and the lack of a high school degree itself wasn't an impairment to obtaining employment for the most part.  One of the richest men to ever live in this county, Fred Goodstein, did not have a high school degree, but simply started off working in his father's oilfield pipeyard as a teenager. He built that business into a huge success, and expanded from there.

 

Dodge factory during World War Two.  At one time, most high school graduates were qualified to do a job like this simply by having a diploma.  This is no longer the case, as vehicles like this are no longer the norm.

But those days are really over.  They are over in part because we live in the Age of Certification, in which having some credentials to obtain employment is a necessity, both because it demonstrates proficiency, and because as the number of high school and college graduates expanded, that became the means of winnowing applicants. That, in turn, caused a certain magic to attach to the certificate, legitimate or not.

But beyond that, the world simply has become more and more technical, making a basic level of introductory knowledge in adequate.  To give a poor example of that, I think when I was in basic training in 1982 you could still get into the Army with a GED.  As an artillery crewman, we learned how to operate a self propelled howitzer whose systems were all mechanical.  Fire Direction  Control, the unit that plotted the mission, was by far the most technical, and they actually still used slide rules at the time, to plot their fire missions.  When I was later a Forward Observer, I plotted missions using a compass, binoculars and a map.  Sometimes I used a BC Scope, a huge set of mounted periscopic binoculars.

 

The military has always been a source of post high school technical training, but more and more, you need to be at least somewhat proficient to even enter the service.

Well, all that is a tying of the past and probably looks about as ancient to a modern artillerymen as a muzzle loading cannon does.  Now the SP is highly computerized and so is everything about plotting the missions.  A person, in order to do the jobs that required just basic knowledge on our part, now has to have a fair degree of technical knowledge.

 

Now, my point isn't that we need to boost high school education as the Army needs people with a technical background, although I will note that those entering the Army today must have an actual high school diploma. Rather, this is just one example of how much more technical the world is today.

To give another example, many years ago I worked on a drilling rig.  It was all a simple mechanical rig.  Most of the rigs in use today remain no more advanced than that one. But, that day is ending.  I overheard some time ago, in the barber shop (that reservoir of many talk) from a drilling operator who was working on a new rig in North Dakota.  He did not do his job from the drilling rig floor like they used to. He was in a warm, clean, inclosed high tech office attached to the rig.  He, indeed, could operate all its systems without ever going outside the office, so the arctic North Dakota winter meant little to him. Rigs of that type are a rarity in the United States, but from talking with a tool pusher who just came back from overseas, they aren't rare outside the US.  The irony, therefore, is that the US is actually behind in modern rigs, a fact that probably developed as our drilling industry was darned near dead for a long time.

Talking to local industrial employers, I know that they perceive that there's a lack of entry level skilled employees in the state. They'd like to hire them, and there's the work, but the employees aren't there.  Why not?

Well, we just don't have the facilities at the high school level to train them. We do still train in some technical fields at the high school level.  You can learn some automotive technology, small engine technology, and welding, for example.  And that's great.  But in order to keep up in this area, we're going to have to provide much more advance training as we enter the second half of the second decade of the 21st Century.

Take cars alone, as an example.

I still retain one old vehicle, a 1962 Dodge truck.  I can work on it, as its as old as I am, and its systems are those which I grew up with and learned how work on. Quite simple, really. But on our more modern vehicles, none of which are new, I have no clue how to fix anything. They are all high tech.

And the mechanics who work on them have been accordingly trained. They're not shade tree mechanics who were really good and worked into shops.  No, they're really trained. They have to be.  And that's the direction things are headed.  In ten years ago, as electric and hybrid vehicles become more common, this is going to become a highly technical field.  And this will expand. It will not be that many years from now that even a thing like a snowblower will be high tech, or a lawn mower, designed not only to do its job well, but to emit little, and use as little in the way of resources as possible.

A person can say, of course, that all of this is fine, and that post high school courses of study can address that.  But if we take that approach, it commits everyone to some post high school study. Should we do that?  I don't think so.

Universities and colleges have increasingly become not only schools for advance academic knowledge, but advanced technical schools. That is fine, but students who do not wish to attend university or college, and not everyone does, should not be forced to do so. And a high school degree should have some immediate serious employment benefit outside of those which are the most basic jobs.  Indeed, that was the original purpose of high school.  The thought was that a graduate was ready to enter a shop, or office.

Indeed recently I heard an interesting author interview on the Priztzer Military Library podcast.  The author had written a book about his interviews with very elderly World War One veterans, when they were in their 90s.  One interview really struck me.  The veteran was asked the simple question about joining the Army, but he gave his entire life history in a few short sentences.  He'd graduated high school shortly before World War One, and during his last year of high school he'd been recommended to an insurance company.  He'd gone to work there immediately after graduating, and save for World War One, he'd worked there his entire career until retirement, rising up in it.

Now, his story would have been impossible.

Of course, this isn't a technical story, in that he didn't enter technical employment, but my point is that here in Casper, where there are many industrial jobs, those jobs are going to get increasingly technical over time.  Those who want those jobs, and the state and local community is always noting how these are well paying jobs, can be ready to enter them right out of high school, with the proper training.  If we don't give them the proper training, they're going to have to obtain it through an additional couple of years of study, where the public funding for the training is lacking. That isn't serving those students well.  This is another reason to back the bond issue.