In the posting <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20050228/004521.html> that you are responding to, I noted the very changes you mention, and I posted the research in question because it goes some way toward supporting Liza's interviews with Wal-Mart workers that Doug reported, though "wanting to help customers" and "working hard" aren't exactly the same thing, because workers studied by the researchers could be working hard to go against the interests of customers (e.g., working diligently to do surveillance of customers suspected of shoplifting, working assiduously to reject customers' claims, working zealously to collect customers' debts, etc.). Then, I mentioned a point that complicates the above: despite workers working harder and more older workers reentering the labor force, customer complaints have gone up: <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20050228/004521.html>.
In any case, though, neither Liza's interviews with Wal-Mart workers wishing to do good nor the British research that I mentioned have anything to do with whether or not customers' increasing dissatisfaction is due to workers' "dumbing down" as you put it at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20050228/004491.html>. Customers may be complaining more because workers are angry with having to work harder or customers are simply more demanding, seeing that workers are in a weaker position than during the neoliberal boomlet of the 1990s.
Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com, Thu Mar 3 21:01:29 PST 2005:
>Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>>Do you people realize how utterly ridiculous you are sounding. I
>>went to a three-room rural elementary school. Half my 8th grade
>>class didn't even go on to highschool. Only 2 out of 20 of us every
>>went to college.
>
>So things have gotten better?
The direction of the secular trend in literacy has been clear: from fewer to more literate individuals.
<blockqutoe>Percentage of persons 14 years old and over who were illiterate (unable to read or write in any language), by race and nativity: 1870 to 1979
Year Total White Black and other
Total Native Foreign-born 1870 20.0 11.5 - - 79.9 1880 17.0 9.4 8.7 12.0 70.0 1890 13.3 7.7 6.2 13.1 56.8 1900 10.7 6.2 4.6 12.9 44.5 1910 7.7 5.0 3.0 12.7 30.5 1920 6.0 4.0 2.0 13.1 23.0 1930 4.3 3.0 1.6 10.8 16.4 1940 2.9 2.0 1.1 9.0 11.5 1947 2.7 1.8 - - 11.0 1950 3.2 - - - - 1952 2.5 1.8 - - 10.2 1959 2.2 1.6 - - 7.5 1969 1.0 0.7 - - 3.6* 1979 0.6 0.4 - - 1.6*
*Based on black population only SOURCE: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970; and Current Population Reports, Series P-23, Ancestry and Language in the United States: November 1979. (This table was prepared in September 1992.)
("Literacy from 1870 to 1979: Illiteracy," <http://nces.ed.gov/naal/historicaldata/illiteracy.asp>)</blockquote>
The biggest story of literacy from the late 19th to the late 20th century is a radical decline of Black illiteracy: from 79.9% in 1870 to 1.6% in 1979.
louis kontos louis.kontos at liu.edu, Fri Mar 4 00:18:04 PST 2005:
>i don't think this generation has gone to the dogs. rather, i look
>at kids in my classes and think they're being ripped off since
>they're getting a lousier education than i did (me with a working
>class background similar to yours, though it seems you have a few
>years on me). they need a ton of 'education' for even lousy jobs.
>and they accumulate tons of debt for the privilege of being
>semi-educated. i've taught at seven colleges and universities,
>therefore seen differences, but can't say the system is working
>well anywhere (at least not according to its self-advertisement). to
>be sure, it only ever worked well for the already-privileged. still,
>it's hard not to see that as more people are receiving a formal
>secondary education, the colleges and universities are becoming
>more like factories.
On on hand, it is clear that more working-class women, especially working-class women of color, have become able to pursue post-secondary education; on the other hand, working-class men, especially working-class men of color, have not been able to do so to the same extent as working-class women: "when compared with all 1999-2000 undergraduates, a greater percentage of Black students were women by almost 8 percentage points (56 percent of all undergraduates were women vs. 64 percent of Black students)" (Katharin Peter and Laura Horn, "Gender Differences in Participation and Completion of Undergraduate Education and How They Have Changed Over Time," <http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2005169>, February 2005, p. 16).
The biggest obstacle to making post-secondary education better is students having to work for wages so that they can pay tuitions, fees, and living expenses:
<blockquote>Among recent high school graduates enrolled in college, 9 out of 10 were full-time students, of whom 40.0 percent were in the labor force. In contrast, 62.3 percent of part-time college students participated in the labor force.
Two-thirds of the 2003 high school graduates enrolled in college attended 4-year institutions. The labor force participation rate for these students was 33.5 percent, and their unemployment rate was 16.0 percent. In contrast, 57.8 percent of the recent graduates enrolled in 2-year institutions were in the labor force, and their unemployment rate was 6.2 percent. ("College Enrollment and Work Activity of 2003 High School Graduates," <ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/news.release/hsgec.txt>, April 27, 2004)</blockquote>
If we wish to see college students concentrate more on study, we have to abolish tuitions and other fees and pay living stipends to all students who need them, so students do not have to work for wages at all. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>