Trade schools may produce the next Frank Stronach

Re: There Is Value In Liberal Arts Education, letter to the editor, March 21. Letter-writer Dan McGarry’s educational elitism is exactly what is wrong with our education system. Our society has a strongly biased and misguided perception that trades workers don’t require higher order analytical, assessment and critical thinking skills and that somehow mere psychomotor skills, easily taught by mindless repetition, are what the trades are all about. His inference that tradesmen and women are nothing but worker drones who are not educated, not intelligent and are not active citizens is beyond the pale. He is dreaming in liberal arts technicolour if he thinks the economy of the future will not require highly skilled trades workers. Thousands of chronically unemployed liberal arts degree holders can only wish it were so.

Alan Edmunds, London, Ont. Letter-writer Dan McGarry dismisses the realities of workplace supply and demand, preferring instead to denigrate the trades as requiring manual skills, learned through demonstrations and repetition. Liberal arts graduates, in his view, function on a higher level, as they apply their critical thinking skills to the evolving economy. He also suggests a dichotomy, involving intelligent, thinking arts graduates versus unthinking corporate drones (tradespeople). Mr. McGarry obviously knows little about the skilled trades or the modern role of production workers.

Tradespeople often have to read and interpret engineering drawings or diagnose faults in complex equipment. They also have to converse with engineers and architects on technical matters and with customers and business people on cost, scheduling and quality issues. Mr. McGarry would likely be surprised to learn the “worker drones” to whom he refers are frequently trained in using statistical methods to monitor production processes, and problemsolving techniques such as brainstorming and root-cause analysis.

Countless tradespeople are independent business people. Many of them end up owning businesses that employ others and, sometimes, evolve into large corporations. Frank Stronach’s Magna and Frank Hasenfratz’s Linamar come to mind.

Alan Underdown, Ottawa. Re: Dangle Carrot Away From Useless Degrees, Matt Gurney, March 19. Matt Gurney’s essay on “useless degrees” raises important issues, but it overlooks two important facts.

First, universities were never intended to provide “training” for jobs. Their primary focus is to educate and develop critical analytical skills, broaden horizons and expand a person’s curiosity.

Second, the reluctance of high school graduates to enter into the skills trades is not simply a matter of how society views those who are in such professions as engineering technology, building trades, broadcast journalism and other programs offered by colleges. An important, but often overlooked topic are the credentials awarded to those who follow the path of skilled trades education. Awarding a diploma after three years of post secondary education does not encourage a high school graduate to enter a college program. A more appropriate credential would be a bachelor of technology degree and for those who select a two year program, an associate degree is the appropriate credential.

The status associated with a degree is important to young people and there is no reason not to bring our system in line with other jurisdictions in the world that recognize skills learning by awarding a degree credential. Douglas Auld, adjunct professor of economics, University of Guelph, and president of Loyalist College, 1988 to 2004.