- Joined
- Nov 9, 2014
I think the education system has a lot to do with it in the UK at least. For the last 15/20 years there's been a massive push to get as many school leavers as possible to go to college and university because of the fucked up way school league tables work in the UK. To do this, schools teach students that NOT getting into uni makes you a garbage person and that the careers that don't require a degree (but are in many ways more essential to the proper running of a country) are somehow less valid than the ones that do. Schools concentrate time, resources and support on children who are academically gifted in the first place and arguably don't really need the support, they're smart, they'll do fine, and without the drive to go to uni a lot of them would choose vocational, skilled careers like engineering or electrical work. This leads to people who may not be academically gifted but may have untapped vocational talent leaving school feeling worthless so they never bother trying to have a career of any sort. Those that do go to university often have no real idea what they're going to do afterwards so they pick up a worthless degree in psychology or philosophy and leave university too entitled and stuck up to lower themselves to manual work. What we're then left with is a massive skills gap at one end of which are the braying graduates who think the world owes them a living because they view themselves as belonging to some sort of intellectual elite and at the other lazy, jobless, complacent, layabouts who have no hope so they jump on any bandwagon they can find to apportion blame. Most of our plumbers, sparkies and brickies come from Poland these days. It's a shame, the old school British spirit is there, but the school system suppresses it and conditions people to be lazy or elite.