Low Expectations, Technology, and Entitlement Attitudes

The corona pandemic is accelerating trends in American society that favor those that embrace the Christian faith even as fewer people are embracing the faith.

The Education Dilemma

One of the indicators of this trend can be seen in the education of our youth. Thanks to the pandemic and the response of educators, perhaps the only primary and secondary students learning anything at all this year are the kids whose parents home school them. While public scholar administrators argue about whether school should be online or in person, the home school kids are studying as usual.

Home schooling involves two attributes that speak to proper adjustment to the current economic and social environment.

First, the home school kids learn to accept responsibility for their own achievement. If they do not learn, the the parents have no one else to blame. In the public school space, this attitude is rare. Teachers, like my wife, complain that administrators and parents both blame poor student performance on the teachers. Parents of particularly lazy kids are often the first to complain and make life difficult for teachers, which leads teachers to lower their expectations and raise average student grades.

Second, parents of home school kids have made tough financial choices to make home schooling available. Sacrificial living is required because having one parent at home teaching requires accepting a lower standard of living. Sacrificial living is rare today. The old ideal of having mom at home caring for the kids has evolved into having mom at home teaching the kids. This is totally counter-cultural.

The availability of YouTube.com lectures on virtually any subject has leveled the playing field for parents apprehensive about teaching their own kids because of their own lack of educational preparation.

My wife, Maryam, stayed out of the workforce for ten years while our kids were small. Home schooling was a rarity back in those days, but the prejudice from working women that my wife experienced was very real. Guilt over putting their own kids in childcare seemed to motivate this female harassment. Who can say?

Technology

Technological adoption in society has always lagged technological advancement. in science, especially when jobs are at stake. In the case of vacuum packaged meat products, like Boxed Beef, the technology was already available in the 1930s, but was not implemented in the food system to any great extent until the 1980s [1]. While many industries will likely accelerate their adoption of new, more automated procedures as a consequence of the pandemic, none will be affected as much as higher education.

The corona pandemic has forced educators across the country to make classes available online. Online education is especially likely to remain the norm in higher education because of cost factors. The student debt crisis in the U.S. is testimony to the observation that many families can no longer afford to send their kids to college. Worse, those that graduate often return to jobs that pay little more than they might have earned before spending the time and money to become educated. Earning $15 per hour is statistically a fifty percent increase in income over $10 per hour, but the increase does not bump one into a higher social class.

The reason is that the skills learned in college often fail to raise their productivity and the degree simply allows the student to outbid a high school student. I used to joke that when I graduated from high school, one needed a high degree to manage a fast-food restaurant and when I graduated from college, one needed a college degree. This is actually more an observation than a joke.

The punchline here is that online college education is cheaper to offer than in person college education. Now, as the pandemic has forced schools to offer these programs online, financial constraints are likely to make this transition permanent. In all likelihood this will lead to increasing cultural bifurcation between those that can pay for in person teaching and those that cannot. The networking advantage of those able to afford in person education is likely to be reflected in expected earnings, much like private school education allowed in the past.

Entitlement Attitudes

Going back to the home schooling example, the idea that student accept responsibility for their own education and have sacrificial living modeled for them by their parents suggests that home schooling is likely to become the gold standard for education for those who care about education outcomes. Public schools that encourage dumping on teachers effectively instill an entitlement attitude in students. This attitude has frequently been attributed to different ethnic groups, but that is simply prejudice—poor and rich kids alike in the public education system display this attitude.

The idea that kids have a right to be educated is a matter of law. The idea that kids are not responsible for their own education is destroying the economic fabric of this country because we live in a highly automated, competitive world economy. Spending public money on education without actually educating kids is a losing strategy. In a high tech society, education (human capital investment) is the key resource in success, one that cannot be bought.

Wrapping Up

Those unwilling to compete and live a discipled lifestyle for whatever reason are likely to end up in poverty. This problem is at the heart of why socialism and communism are failed ideologies. This is why I have observed for decades that poverty in America is less a matter of income and more a matter of attitude. The corona pandemic has reinforced this observation.

Faith in God, which encourages us to work hard, invest in our families, and take responsibility for our actions, is an important strategy for surviving and thriving in the world we now finding ourselves in. Of course, faith in God is not just a strategy, it is much more.

Footnotes

[1] Hiemstra, Stephen. 1985. Labor Relations, Technological, and Structural Changes in Beef Packing and Retailing. Dissertation. EastLansing:Michigan State University.

Low Expectations, Technology, and Entitlement Attitudes
Also see:
Water Cooler Observations, June 24, 2020
Interview about the Corona Life in English and Spanish with Stephen W. Hiemstra, April 24, 2020
Managing Change 
Believer’s Prayer
Other ways to engage online:
Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com.
Newsletter:  http://bit.ly/Norm2020

 

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