You NEED Schoolin', Baby I'm Not Fooling. But Someone is...

 All this Harvard v. Trade School talk bemuses me. Harvard would get KILLED in a football game between the two!

But seriously now, there is an absolute need for both. When I was a young Ferrerman, I fell into commercial painting job. It was a union shop and though I was young and had done little more in painting than being forced to paint the front steps at ma's house, they brought me along pretty well. They had me cutting in on my second day. I had pretty much resigned myself to being the go-for kid because of my age and unpractical experience. But I took to cutting in and rolling and all the other stuff. I didn't work with Don Summers, but he clearly had some juice in that small company, and he would throw his arm around me and tell me the wonders of the union. The union would send me to trade school to learn all aspects of painting & decorating. You know, it sounded like a pretty good deal. 

Young as I was, I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a painter the rest of my life. I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I didn't jump at anything just yet. I was happy to be working and making what was good money then.

College isn't for everyone, and neither is trade school. We need both though in this country of 330-some million people, When I could have gone to college, it was still pretty affordable. The thing was, I had no idea what I wanted to go to college for. So many kids still don't, and it amazes me that they would go into the massive, usurious debt that is a 4-year college program now, without having medical or law school in mind for when they finish that. Yes, there are young people who go into the deep despair of debt to achieve a degree in African-American studies or 18th century English literature. Not a lot of good-paying careers in those fields. Historically, since WWII, college has been a good- and affordable- place to hang out for a few years while a young person figured out what to do to finance adulthood. Well, not anymore, but for a few decades it was a good place to learn to drink, meet the opposite sex, experiment with the same sex. or avoid the Viet Nam war. Some high achievers did all of that.

For several years now, the think-tankers in the media wing of the republican party (FOX news), have been poo-pooing the idea of going to college. This befuddles me because this whole student loan thing has got to be lining the already wealthy pockets of GOP donors who know a good scam when they see one. Why would they want to kill this Golden Goose of perfectly legal shylocking? Maybe I'll figure it out by the end of this piece. You just never know what our social engineering overlords are cooking up, sneaky fvcks that they are. But if you own the papers on Sally Goforth who took out a loan to get a 4-year degree in 12th century Peruvian pottery, you will never have to work another day in your life. Sally takes out a loan for $75k for her studies, manages to make payments for a few years and whittles her debt DOWN(?) to $135k! Mobsters and car salesmen, BTW, have got to be up in arms screaming: "WHY CAN'T WE DO THAT??!!"  They get in legal trouble when they screw people like that, but rich guys screwing kids on student loans get yachts and summer homes.

So, FOX and others are pushing trade schools now. This is causing me more befuddlement! There aren't many trade schools left. The one offered to me back in '79, Washburne, closed its doors in 2005. They taught trades; painting, plumbing and others including the culinary arts. It cost the student money, but most of the trade-schooling was subsidized by unions, as mine would have been. A pretty good deal if that's what you wanted to do with your life. 

The one selling point that FOX failed to mention about trade schools- and it seems very important- was "good union wages and benefits". That wasn't going to be part of the deal. FOX republicans are not in favor of unions! Unions cost them money with all their demands for good wages, benefits and safe working conditions. Essentially, they are saying: "We want you to have the skills to fix our toilets, but we don't want to pay you too much money for it." I promise you: if these people could get slavery legalized again, they would. Payroll is just such a burden for any business as it cuts into profits. Ask any small to corporate business owner. They'll tell you this in a very roundabout way.

Don't go to college to bide your time figuring out your future. It's abusively expensive. If you are good with your hands and your mind and you like fixing things, yes, do go to a trade school- if you can find one. Will there be more trade schools in the future? Maybe. I doubt they'll be as serious as I understand Washburne was. They certainly won't be as union orientated. This being the United States, the birthplace of gangster capitalism, these trade schools might be more along the lines of the late-night ads you see to become an HVAC tech or a truck driver. So, schools, yeah... but more like some entrepreneur's money-making scheme to get you to pay tuition so that you can be as saddled with debt as the fancy college kids. Hey- that's America, baby. Your American dream is available to you at low, low monthly rates for the rest of your life.