Some assumptions don’t always check out
Iwas sitting in a motel in Twizel this week which had a good quote from Dr Seuss written in quirky writing on the wall.
It said: ‘‘Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so GET ON YOUR WAY!’’
I like to think the message is that we all have our individual mountain to climb and we won’t get there without making that first step.
Some may see it as more aspirational as in following your dreams or reaching for the sky or some such nonsense.
The aspirations of checkout operators took centre stage this week as part of a political debate in which they were dragged into the maelstrom of point-scoring in the early rounds of what promises to be an ugly, bruising three years of sparring in the house.
In slamming Labour’s free first year of tertiary education policy, National leader Bill English said Labour was expecting the checkout operator to subsidise the education of accountants and lawyers. Ardern fired back:
‘‘At what point did the Leader of the Opposition lose his ambition for New Zealanders, that that checkout operator could not aspire to go on to [tertiary study]?
‘‘And I say to those checkout operators having been one myself – you, too, can be a Minister of Finance, or the Prime Minister of New Zealand,’’ she said.
We shouldn’t read too much into this sort of gladiatorial banter and English was of course being silly. All taxpayers subsidise other members of the community to some extent at some time. A progressive tax system is not a direct payment for the government services each individual uses.
A checkout operator’s taxes might be helping to pay for the education of lawyers but the lawyers might in a short while be helping to pay for health care for the checkout operator’s children.
While English’s jibe was a cynical low blow, Ardern’s remarks show how relentless positivism can only go so far.
The trouble with having aspirations for people is that they don’t necessarily coincide with the aspirations people have for themselves.
And even if they do, they might not in fact be very unrealistic.
The inference from Ardern’s comment is that people in jobs like checkout operating are somehow under-achieving and should aspire to go to university.
These sorts of aspirations have got us into a lot trouble.
Far too many people go to university which has resulted in lower quality education and lower standards as academic staff face pressures to pass students who should be doing something else.
The attitude that some jobs are hardly worth doing means we have foreign workers on work permits or working holiday permits doing much of the menial work in New Zealand.
And, as many graduates find, a university degree is no guarantee of a better job.
Perhaps a more realistic aspiration or ambition is that people should make a living so they can support themselves and contribute to the collective good.
In reality many people are probably quite grateful for the checkout job.
If I use my local Pak ‘N’ Save as an example, people of many nationalities are engaged in toting up grocery items.
It’s one of those jobs that doesn’t require perfect English and is a stepping stone to other jobs.
For some, the hours will suit or they will enjoy the fact that they don’t take any work worries home with them.
I can see some merit in the argument that checkout operators and people working in similar jobs have somehow been failed by the education system.
Of course the work might be a comfortable fit with a person’s abilities but you would hope 12 or 13 years of schooling would produce a different result.
We also need to face the prospect of jobs like checkout operating being phased out and the need to ensure such workers have an easy transition to other work.
This is where the value of good basic skills that should be inculcated at school come in.
The tragedy is that people doing jobs like checkout operating may have switched off from education at an early age.
People who are book smart, street smart or hand smart (practical, handy) can generally make their way in the world without a lot of help.
But those who don’t have much of any these qualities need some very intense attention in the education system. The bottom 50 per cent of learners are the ones we need to worry about.
Aspirations are all very well but first we need to do the hard work on ensuring the strugglers have some choices, especially with the prospect of many types of work disappearing.
They will need good basic transportable skills that only a good education can provide. And perhaps the right aspiration, such as the need to earn a living and pay the bills.