The gap between the generations.
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CULTURAL CONSEQUENCES
I was struck by this comment in response to a post I wrote on “The End of the Region as we know it”:
Unlike the generations which came before, ours has no history of protests or rallying that made any difference to the causes we stood for. Why should this be any different?
The highways will continue to criss-cross the landscape. The pipelines will continue to shuttle toxins through our most pristine regions. The land we’ll depend on to sustain ourselves for the generations to come will still fall prey to short-term economic gain.
And we, my generation, will listen to those who call us apathetic – the same ones who support the very causes we oppose – and finally agree with them. Our hands will be thrown up in the air, and we’ll have finally learned not to give a damn about anything.
My first reaction: you can’t keeping throwing your hands in the air indefinitely. Eventually you want to use them for something.
But then I think: If in the next year the Agricultural Land Commission is neutered, the transit referendum fails, Tsawwassen Mills paves over another piece of the flyway, Massey Crossing proceeds, the port pulls adjacent lands out of the ALR, one or more pipelines are approved, the coal terminals expand, and we can’t even get a bike lane approved in Vancouver, what is left but despair?
And how then to we expect anyone, particularly young people, to respond rationally?
Such despair, however, would translate its way into the popular culture, and eventually its politics. I’m not sure how that would manifest itself initially – nihilism, presumably – but eventually something worse. Or, given the energy and optimism of the young, something better.
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Can An Apprenticeship System Solve Israel’s Crisis Of Over-Educated Unemployed
There are nearly 300,000 students registered in Israel’s higher education institutions. Some (medical and architecture students, for example) have no other choice because the profession they’ve chosen requires a degree. But most students aren’t studying for a specific profession, but just to get a degree so they can say they have one.
Meanwhile, the vast majority don’t have full-time jobs but instead live at the expense of their parents, earning only minimal sums with student jobs. Parent seem to understand, if not welcome, the idea that times have changed. Getting a college degree today isn’t like it once was.
One possible solution is to bring back the concept of the apprentice or trainee. Why not create settings where young people would start work along with a professional — a lawyer, teacher, engineer, accountant or even a doctor — for a few years, at the end of which they would go through the relevant professional exams? Students would acquire the academic and theoretical parts of their education during a concentrated year of study at the end of the internship period.
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REAL ESTATE: DIFFERENT PRIORITIES
A new series in Atlantic Cities:
Nona Willis Aronowitz traveled across the country for six weeks in search of the best, most affordable places for twentysomethings to achieve their goals nowadays—whether it’s to start a business, live off their art, have kids earlier, or just finally find a fulltime job.
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I definitely agree with her about ‘Towns luring back their townies’ – like Pittsburgh:
… in smaller post-industrial cities like Cleveland and Pittsburgh (and its neighboring suburb, Braddock) … most of the young people taking advantage of their virtues are natives. They’ve been there along, reasoning that the economy was too precarious for them to take a risk in a bigger city where had far fewer connections. Or they’ve returned after college or a disappointing stint in a major metropolis, realizing that they need their hometown just as much as their hometown needs them.
But is this analogous in Canada? Are Windsor and Oshawa keeping their kids?
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“Can An Apprenticeship System Solve Israel’s Crisis . . .”? It did for me.
I apprenticed with John Wade architect in Victoria in 1952 and registered as an architect in Vancouver in 1959.
Professional apprenticeships work!
Canada has lots of land. LOTS. Therefore I am not at all concerned with industrial expansion into ALR, for example. We should not grow raspberries on land that is worth $1M or more per acre. We should import them or grow them elsewhere in Canada.
We need more roads and pipelines to support a resource based economy. Not less of them. Pipelines with a national priority, like XL, Northern Gateway or Kinder Morgan should not be held up by US funded lobby groups or local special interests.
The core issue is that governments tax too much, have too many regulations, are far too big and civil servants get paid for too much. Our national deficits and debts are far too high.
And yes, too many people get a useless degree, especially outside of science, engineering or medicine. Perhaps all government funding for arts degrees should be withdrawn completely. We need more trades and apprenticed technical people in all sorts of fields. Even the required 12 year high school system should be revisited . Not everyone needs 12 years of school. 9 or ten, plus a 2-3 year apprentice program where skilled folks make money at 18 is a worthwhile concept to introduce.
I wonder how many of ‘the previous generation’ who successfully fought the Vancouver freeway are now supporting new bridges, or on the flip side protesting against livable strategies such as bike lanes and the Broadway line. I’ve met several people at public events who used to be ‘activists’, but now that they are invested in a car-dependent single family home, don’t want to do anything to that is (perceived) to disrupt their property values or mobility.
Meanwhile, the younger generation is repeatedly told that they ‘don’t understand’ or ‘things are different now…’ And we wonder why there is a perception that youth are ‘throwing their hands in the air’!
Sure, they are the same people.
The people protesting against the Vancouver freeway were just regular NIMBYs. Of course, their narrow self interest just happened to align the with interest of the city, so we think of them as altruistic when they weren’t.
Now they protest against development, or pipelines, or the Site C Dam, or even the skytrain. Whatever. Some of the projects people want to stop should be stopped, while others shouldn’t, but the reason protests happen is because people are comfortable with the way things are and try to stop change.
“Can An Apprenticeship System Solve Israel’s Crisis . . .”?
Even worse than a glut of overqualified academics is the fact that at the same time we seem to have a shortage of skilled tradesmen. There seems to be a pervading attitude that academic achievements are some sort of golden ticket, but that is certainly not a blanket truth. There are a lot of golden tickets to be had at institutions like BCIT and VCC, too.
Exactly. The education industry, promoting degrees, is just that: an industry like any other promoting their own view of the world. We have too many misaligned academically trained young folks, and too few trade oriented skilled folks. Time to shift funding ASAP.
Why is anyone surprised the young aren’t out protesting this or that? Young people are just people. They aren’t out protesting for the same reasons Baby Boomers aren’t out protesting – they are interested in their own lives.
They drive cars when they can afford it, they play Call of Duty when they have time, and they hold opinions that range across the political spectrum, perhaps leaning left only because they are poorer. There isn’t a consensus among the young. They are self-interested like everybody else. They like burning oil and living in the suburbs and building pipelines and exporting coal and yelling at cyclists like everybody else. They care about transit only insomuch as they ride it, which is marginally more only because they are poorer, not inherently more altruistic.
The young won’t save us! Indeed, there isn’t much that needs to be saved. The globe will warm, and things will change, and some will suffer and die while others will benefit and profit, some species will go extinct, and people will adapt.
Watch Russell Brand Sum it up….
Exactly . We need less government, not more. Things will adapt as people are an inventive species and adapt and change. Northern climates, for example, are winners of global warming. Longer growing seasons and more ice free ports, to state just two benefits of many. We need more free choices of individuals, not more regulations by governments. Less Obamas or Hollands or Trudeaus, more Harper or David Cameron or Boris Johnson.
Global warming is going to suck.
But there’s little that can or will be done about it. For all the vitriol over bike lanes, they do literally nothing to slow climate change. And I use “literally” literally.
It will be another event in the history of our species. It probably won’t result in our extinction, but a few catastrophes might occur, and there will be folks who figure out how to make money from them.
As a species, we never let a good crisis go to waste.
> But is this analogous in Canada? Are Windsor and Oshawa keeping their kids?
Is it not the case now that Windsor has lower unemployment than Toronto?