[lbo-talk] School Debate: Central Focus

[shag carpet bomb]

wojtek:
<>
<> [WS:]  I realize that, of course, but I come from a different cultural
<> environment (Europe) where skilled "manual" labor was highly prized.
<> My grandfather was an electrician (and a card-carrying Communist who
<> remembered listening to Lenin in person in St. Petersburg in 1917) and
<> many of my childhood friends went into vocational schools and
<> explicitly rejected the value of college education.  My best buddy and
<> role model while I was in high school, was a guy who trained to be a
<> welder, and my significant others came, for the most part, from the
<> working class background.  More importantly, I met many blue collar
<> workers whose level of political sophistication was was higher than
<> that of college graduates.  I also understand that skilled manual
<> labor is highly respected in Germany and Sweden as well.
<>
<>>From my pov, the "manual" labor can be as if not more intellectually
<> challenging than many white collar jobs.
<>
<> Wojtek

When I was a kid, I left home and lived with a German family. My own
family had scattered across the country to find work b/c of a severe
economic crisis: plant shutdowns, etc. (I got laid off due to
shutdowns three times within my first year of full time employment at
age 17-18)

I would come home from my waitress job and tell H, the father, about
my day: the crappy customer treatment, etc. He was a carpenter and
he'd tell me about how his sister in Germany was a waitress all her
life because it was perfectly acceptable as a career.

Is that still the case in Germany?

My sister is a lifelong waitress, pretty much, although she's got a
degree in education. I think she's trying to get work at a local
vocational training school which also caters to the disabled, but
hasn't had luck yet. She's not a waitress/bartender by choice, IOW.

I had to laugh, when I first started working here, I happened to pull
out a few tricks one learns as a waitress./bartender. It was during
our regular potlucks. The response? Wow? Did you learn that in school
or something? They assumed that the only way I could have known how to
make a proper display of cocktail napkins was in restaurant management
school or something. LOL Admittedly, this was from a person from a
rather upper middle class family as were the people who assumed as
much as well.