Class, Education, and Meaning Manufacture
I was just talking to Brink about Annette Lareau’s book Unequal Childhoods about the differences between the rearing and education of middle class and working class kids. This got me thinking, naturally, about the transformation of labor markets. People raising their kids to be cheap labor are having and will continue to have problems. Clearly middle class kids who develop human capital relevant to an information economy will do better. But a lot of the information economy will be automated or outsourced eventually as physical and human capital improves in China, India, etc. As Ed Leamer draws out in his entertaining and smartifying review of The World is Flat the less mundane and codifiable a job is, the less competition there is going to be for it (by both man and machine.) Here’s his list from more mundane and codifiable to less:
· Type this page.
· Edit this page.
· Write an article for an Economics journal.
· Write a good joke.
One way to read this is that the really indispensible folks are those in the business of manufacturing meaning. My job is a meaning-making job in a pretty literal sense. I am here to help people understand what all this thinking other people have done means. (In the process, you end up having and conveying some new, meaningful thoughts.) But meaning manufacture is broader than that. It’s basically ideas and aesthetics. If you can write a moving novel or ideas, a kickass rock opera, or a gutbusting monologue you are not about to be replaced by a robot or a Chinaman. Of course, only a small number of people will ever be able to do that sort of thing. But that small number gets bigger all the time as the number of people with the money to buy meaning gets bigger.
In any case, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my future kids to be middle managers any more than I want them to be auto workers. Or even doctors or lawyers, unless they really wanna be. And I just don’t like the hyperprogrammed minivancentric middle-upper class childrearing style. I’m not sure that’s the best for building the human capital for future meaning makers. That’s one reason I plan to home school my children. I fear their potential will be squandered in even the best schools. I’d like my kids to be educated not just to show up on time, effectively navigate bureaucracy, and compete well in social word/power games, but to creative and entrepreneurial with the ability to make the kind of meaning that other people need. Of course, I think kids should grow up to be whatever they want. But we all know the kind of education you get is going to have a pretty big effect on what you want. And it seem to me that responsible parenting is partly about trying to get your kids to want things that will enable them to have the best possible life. Can you get ahead of the curve by educating your kids to be poet entrepreneurs? Are today’s middle class culture tomorrow’s equivalent of today’s working class values. Will the “cultural creatives” constitute a new and distinct class? Should you try to get you kids in?
April 19th, 2006 02:22
I just read Lareau’s book for an Egalitarianism seminar last semester. What I found most interesting about it was the suggestion that that racial differences are nowhere near as important as class differences. That is, the middle class blacks had much more in common with the middle class whites than with other blacks. But my recollection was that this proposal has made the book quite controversial in some quarters, and naturally, there’s some question about qualitative vs quantitative methodology in sociology research.
Mind you, it also reminded me of all the reasons why I’m studying philosophy instead of sociology, but it was surprisingly an interesting read. And regarding what you mention here about the joys of middle management, I wonder a problem here is simply that we don’t know how creativity will be needed for jobs that don’t exist yet. I have to imagine that the workplace of the future will only offer more opportunities for innovation and creativity, opportunities that we in 2006 cannot imagine anymore than someone in 1986 could imagine the demand for webmasters and folks with Dreamweaver skills.
Also, you’re right to emphasize the need to hone creativity skills, but maybe more right than you realize. Though many jobs out there are mundane, it seems to me that creativity is what allows employers to separate the wheat from the chaff of their employees. The creative and innovative types are the ones who are likely to be promoted from middle management to, say, the upper echelons.
April 19th, 2006 05:57
Wow. A parent that thinks he can “mold” his children better than even best teachers in the country. What a suprise.
April 19th, 2006 08:25
Wayne, there’s a distinction between what even the best teachers in the country can do and what the best schools in the country actually do. I suspect that Will would be willing to stipulate that there may well be someone else in the country, possibly presently employed as a teacher, who would outperform him in educating his children in a one-on-one (or close to) home setting. Schools aren’t organized that way.
With income tax driving a wedge between cost to an employer and income to an employee, even if one could find such a full-time tutor in whom one had such trust, the cost would be prohibitive for the vast majority.
April 19th, 2006 08:54
Brent, Exactly. Thank you. My problem is with the curriculum in even great schools, not with the skills of teachers. I believe in the principle of comparative advantage, and if I could afford to do it, I will hire tutors for my kids that can teach a subject better than I, or my partner, can.
Anyway, this is all speculative. I don’t have any kids yet.
April 19th, 2006 11:10
“Building the human capital for future meaning makers.” This site should come with a barf bag.
April 19th, 2006 15:54
Use your hands!
April 19th, 2006 23:00
With all due respect, W.W., but have you considered that perhaps there might be some misalignment between your circumscribed view of what your job IS, and the actual function that your job serves in the economy?
Certainly, the group of folks that could do precisely what you do is quite small. Certainly, you have skills that could be applied to a broad range of potential projects.
But — and again I mean no disrespect to what you do — do you not see the irony of promoting your job in the field of “meaning manufacture” as an example of “indispensiblity” when, in fact, your employer is a non-profit organization? And but for certain vagaries of the tax code and reliance upon the kindness of certain deep-pocketed strangers, it likely would not even exist?
I’m generally not comfortable doling out advice on child-rearing, in large part because I have none myself. But since these are just hypothetical children at this point, I guess I can say that the program you describe sounds to me like a very good way to rear to future academics, but I don’t see it being any more effective at inculcating future entrepreneurs than the current factory-style schooling paradigm.
Based on my own humble career in the world of business, I would opine that “creativity” is largely an in-born trait that can be alternately encouraged or quashed, but not truly “taught.” And I think people of a certain romantic bent tend to overrate its importance to being a successful entrepreneur.
Again, in my own experience, many very successful entrepreneurs do quite well despite displaying no outward signs of any more than average levels of creativity. But I’ve yet to meet one who excelled without having mastered those more mundane skills you mention — punctuality, the ability to navigate bureaucracy, and notable skill in social word/power games. And I say this, fully cognizant of the fact that most of my own greatest faults lie in having failed to fully master those things myself.
April 19th, 2006 23:13
PJ, By indispensibility, I don’t mean that the economy can’t do without me. I mean that I have little to no competition from robots and chinamen.
And that was all sheer conjecture! I’m certainly not telling anybody what to do with their kids. Just thinkin’ out loud, man.
April 19th, 2006 23:35
I would say you have far more competition from robots and Chinamen than you realize. Cato gets its money from grants. Those grants largely come from foundations established and funded to exploit tax loopholes in a way the givers find appealing. Remove the loopholes, and you remove the comparative attractiveness of charitable giving. Thus, more funds would divert from foundations to other, more highly valued ends — like, for instance, building robots and investing in China.
April 20th, 2006 09:07
RJ, It’s a stretch. Tax-deductibility is surely important for us. But I think you’re underestimateing the extent to which most of our money comes from smaller individual donors who give out of a sense of shared values and ideological solidarity.
April 20th, 2006 16:48
Hey Will,
I agree with you on the curriculum in our schools (though I may have a lower opinion of most teachers) but don’t you think that one’s home/personal life has more to do with their self worth and interests?
You and I are about the same age and we were born about 20 miles from each other. I’m assuming that you were raised middle(or lower-middle)class as I was and probably had a very similar education. That said, you’re a well-read philosopher with Cato and I am a high school drop out who has trouble making it through Tuesdays With Morrie.
Do you really think that a different education for you would have meant a career as a re-seller of propane and propane supplies? Or, for that matter, made me a Cato brain?
April 20th, 2006 17:45
It was not until I had children that I truly understood at all the nature side of the nature v. nurture debate. Everyone wants to think that their children will be the most brilliant and perfect of creatures and that it is just the environment (which is controllable to an extent) that will make the difference. I’ve come to think that the environment is the icing on the cake which makes it prettier, more marketable, etc. but the cake itself is nature. When I had children, I was stunned at how each one was their own person with their own strengths and weaknesses and how they were so different from each other and also from me. I have one that thrives on creativity and freedom which he does not receive in the public schools and coincidentally is not doing well (I wish I could have been able to implement your plan with him but alas not economically feasible at the time), and one which thrives on routine and rote learning. He does very well in the public schools and would probably not thrive in a creative environment. He just gets lost on those kinds of assignments and goes blank, and the other one writes essays in detention about how he did not do his homework because tigers jumped out of the woods on the way to the bus and he narrowly escaped with his life and how he had to throw the homework at the tiger to have even a chance at escape. Is one better and one worse? I don’t think so- just very different and I expect that their jobs will also be very different. Not everyone has the ability to become sucessful in the field of ideas and aesthetics, and not everyone wants to enter that world even if they could. This is off topic, but because of these reasons, I worry about our manufacturing base being exported. Where are those people going to work if our country becomes a high paying ideas and low paying service economy with nothing in-between? To Mike’s point- not everyone will become a cultural creative even given the same education. And as a side note, of course your children will be the most brilliant and perfect of creatures- and I’m not being snarky!
April 20th, 2006 20:16
I enjoyed that book enormously and thought it explained better than anything I’ve read what I see in teaching at two very different schools this year - one in a working class, Catholic environment and one a prestigious children’s conservatory populated mostly by the elite.
I think your quick take on the gist of the book is off. I don’t find the elite kids “hyperprogrammed” for the most part, or being trained for middle management. The main difference, as David Brooks summed up well in his column on the subject, is that the elite children are treated much more as people. They are expected to have opinions, articulate them, and have them listened to and respected, even at age four. They are interacted with as people and as a result they learn to interact with others the same way. I find it a pleasure to interact with these children in exactly this way. They treat me with the same respect I treat them, and they develop not just institutional knowhow but an appreciation for institutions. In contrast the Catholic working class environment I’ve spent time in, the kids alternate between being yelled at, told what to do, or left alone. Their parents jaw and disparage teachers. The students have no respect for institutions because they’ve learned that at home, and at school they alternatve between bad behavior because they have no attachment to what they’re being made to sit through, and good behavior out of fear of punishment.
I think it’s clear where the creative class will come from out of these two groups, and it’s clearly the former. And that’s where you’ll find me teaching too, as it’s where I’m respected and make a difference.
As you can see I had a head full of steam on this one.
April 21st, 2006 15:52
I agree, with the proviso however that skills mean little.
In a few years one can go from never having heard of X to creating a world-leading X company worth $billions. The key: knowing how to learn, how to communicate, how to assess (and take) risk, how to work with others, how to listen, how to negotiate, how to bounce back from failure, etc. All teachable to some degree.
Dreamweaver comes and Dreamweaver goes, but these meta-skills are valuable regardless.
April 21st, 2006 16:56
Eric,
May I ask what your definition of ‘creative’ is?
It sounds like you’re saying that a child with a higher level of early sophistication will ‘clearly’ go on to be more innovative.
April 21st, 2006 20:09
I don’t think I said any of those things.
Identifying one of these two pools of children as the one from which the creative people will come is not to say it holds for every child in the pool. It does make it more likely for any given child, and I would assert with certainty that the pool as a whole is dramatically more creative.
Nor is sophistication my choice of word. The wealthier children consistently have their own personal voice cultivated, and they are valued for having and expressing that voice. Is it not clear how that connects to creativity? Is it also clear that Will is off in calling this “hyperprogramming”?
April 21st, 2006 22:45
What creativity is is a great question, and so is how you teach it. I’m not sure you do teach it, exactly. I suppose I’ve always been relatively creative. That’s one reason I became an art major. I’ve always liked to make stuff up, and express it in some form or other. But I think I did learn a lot about how to be creative as an art student, mainly by watching how my especially creative teachers operated. I think part of is developing what my friend Clark calls (I think) negative capability, a kind of suspension of judgment, willingness to let ideas just happen, and a willingness to live inside a kind of radical uncertainty as an idea or an image or a song unfolds or works itself out, instead of working too hard to make something happen. Something nothing does happen, and you have to be ok with that. (It happens a lot on this here blog.) When it does the big trick seems to be noticing when something has happened recentering on it, and then letting it open up further. This is hard, I don’t know how to describe what it is have the capacity to say, “Aha! that’s good, that works, that’s a keeper,” but that’s the crucial step. At some point, you start putting it on paper or canvas or whatever, and then you have to open to the process of creation, without pushing it or guiding it too much. When I was an art student I had some friends who were maybe not extremely creative when it came to having a good idea right off the cuff (they were not cleverly creative), and some of them were pretty derivative at first, but as they got better at craft, and started to trust the process of just making—confident that the clay would not collapse, that paint would not become muddy, that they could get the nose right—some of them got very excited to find out that they were very creative after all—that the things they made turned out unusual, engaging, and unexpectedly fine. That’s something I think you can teach kids, just by teaching them craft—how to draw, how to play an instrument, write a poem, etc.—an encouraging them to develop negative capability or openness and letting things emerge in the process of making. I think the same skill carries over to conjuring entrepreneurial ideas, writing a business plan, seeing how a task inside a firm can be better coordinated or executed, how to solve a puzzle in a programming language, etc. When I went to grad school in philosophy, I think my training as a painter helped me, not because arguing is like painting, but because opening your mind to the dialectical space, having confidence that a solution or a path will emerge in the process of thinking something through is a lot like opening your imagination to the problem of how to see or envision a picture, to find a way to convey a mood in form and light. Its the same kind of associative, imaginative, synthetic openness. And I guess what I was saying is that this is precisely what is hard to routinize or mechanize, whatever it is applied to, and so people who can do it will be valuable long after robot designed robots can take out your cancer for a quarter. Not everyone is equally creative, but I think everyone can become more creative with the right training and opportunity, and that kind of training should become increasingy valuable over time.
April 22nd, 2006 00:15
If everyone CAN become more creative, and moreover, everyone DID become more creative, then wouldn’t that suggest the marginal returns from such training would slope sharply downward as the supply of creative product grew?
I know you’re not solely focused here on artisitc creativity, but taking that as an example, the trends in that arena have all been running directly counter to what you suggest. As technology has allowed the cost barriers to entry in so many artistic fields — from filmmaking to publishing to music recording — to drop precipitously, public demand is not nearly keeping pace with the explosion of supply. This has a depressing effect on the profits and wages artistic entrepreneurs can capture across the board. A certain cream may always rise, but marginal artist is giving way in many more areas than ever before to the unpaid amateur. I know I find a lot more enjoyment out of YouTube than I do the whole mass of 600 channels I get through digital cable.
And I’m not as sure as you are that the process of “making” carries over so neatly into the world of entrepreneurship. The first distinction I’d make is in the focus of the entrepreneur rather than the artist. It is less important to “create” than to “create that which other people NEED.” Moreover, the conventional wisdom, and I’m inclined to agree with it, is that developing the great idea, the killer ap, the visionary business model…is the EASY part. Executing it, convincing others to sign on to your vision, navigating how to deliver that product or service to those who would most value it, learning from your mistakes, spotting and adapting to changes in the market — THOSE are the hard parts.
And most of those things have to do with social dynamics, the ability to read people, to manage expectations, to play politics, the willingness to humble oneself (or to engage in blatant self-promotion) when necessary, and so on.
Some of those things can be taught. Most of them, though, are honed over time through social interraction. Which is why, though I have no philosophical objection to home-schooling, I just can’t help but feel whenever I hear parents or would-be parents talking about it, that they seem to be missing what exactly what is most important about what kids learn in school. There is no class more important than recess, because the lessons you learn on the playground will take you a lot further than any curriculum, no matter what its substance.
April 23rd, 2006 14:44
I agree. I work in middle manaagement and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. The office work is no better and sometimes worse than being an auto worker. Auto workers make similar money, have better benefits, and do not have to pay back tens of thousands of dollars in student loans. I don’t know what the answer is, but there has to be something better.
April 24th, 2006 14:20
I just finished it too and enjoyed it enormously. I really can’t understand Eric’s take above
elite children are treated much more as people
How, exactly, does being treated as someone else’s project amount to being treated more as a person?
April 24th, 2006 14:44
I’m sure that at least some of you will think that I’m splitting hairs…but I think we’re now discussing the difference between creativity and inspiration. Who was more creative; the ancient Greek dude who actually invented the steam engine, or James Watt who changed the world with it? I would say that Will’s art teacher couldn’t have taught him to be creative but inspired him by showing the limitless possibilities of his own creativity.
If inspiration equals ‘taught creativity’, then I would agree that the wealthy children would be more creative. However, I think that the amount of raw creativity is comparable across social lines…. and I believe that most kids can be inspired to creativity if the right people take the time.
May 25th, 2006 08:12
Kim…
Lookks like your page was heavily hit by spam…
May 25th, 2006 08:12
Kim…
Lookks like your page was heavily hit by spam…