Job Training ?

One principal says this new job training program will "to be exposed to people from different cultures". I'm **NOT** kidding.

I’m always interested in jobs and the job market. This is because I need a good job like every one else in this country whose last name isn’t part of a multi-conglomerate or law firm or associated with Hollywood or some other national past time. It’s also because I’m a teacher in a business department and that’s frequently the basis of judgment on our programs, funding, and enrollment by others. It’s also because I’m an economist and I know that we live in a country that’s 70% dependent on consumer income for its economy and about 67% percent of those households are dependent on wages and salaries for their shopping sprees. So, here’s a headline for you from the Detroit Free Press that will probably give you the same kind of willies that I got when giving it a read: Walmart offers job training via DPS. Yup, that’s via the Detroit Public Schools. Evidently we’re now preparing students for those jobs of the future.

“The training program was kicked off today at assemblies held at Frederick Douglass Academy for Young Men and at Western International High.

The Detroit Public Schools have teamed up with Walmart Stores to provide job training and entry-level, afterschool jobs to students at four high schools.

Detroit International Academy for Women and Henry Ford High will also participate.

Students will get 11 weeks of job-readiness training during the school day and 10 high school credits for the class and work experience.”

Sean Vann, principal at Douglass, said 30 students at that school will get jobs at Walmart. He said the program will allow students an opportunity to earn money and to be exposed to people from different cultures – since all of the stores are in the suburbs.

The irony of attending a school named Henry Ford High and preparing for a job at Walmart in the once great industrial city of our country is not lost me. I’m also wondering exactly what kind of “culture” the program exposes its students to since my experience in the surburbs with burbies is their strong desire for a distinct lack of culture. Maybe their planning on a course in customer service that includes ways to not intimidate Stepford wives when you do not look exactly like one of them. Your guess has got to be better than mine. Perhaps they need to learn how to recognize one concrete cement block store from another. Maybe an introduction to bland and boring food found a chain restaurants in those ubiquitous shopping centers in every burb?

This is truly depressing if the best we can offer a group of young people in a major urban city is a future at Walmart. I remember the threat at my high school was you’d get stuck pushing papers at Mutual of Omaha if you didn’t go to college. I’d just like to say, this isn’t a joke, but it sure feels like it should be. What ever happened to training nonuniversity-bound kids to repair automobiles or work with computers?

Is this what our economy has come to these days?