A shortage of "tradies"

is apparently causing problems in the building industry and other places. Really? I am surprised. (Sarcasm alert there.)

Apparently someone in the building industry has said that a generation of young people have been brainwashed into believing if they don't go to university they are failures. I would say it has been more than one generation. It has been at least two and even a third may have been infected by that nonsense. 

Most of my secondary education was undertaken in "area schools". They are what the name suggests, schools for an area. They are rural schools where students are brought in by bus, often from very long distances. The Senior Cat was the head of two such schools. Both provided a very basic two stream education. You did the "area school" or rural course or the "public examination" (PEB) course. There were no subject choices and the system greatly favoured boys and sciences over girls and any arts subjects.   

It was far from a satisfactory system. The teachers were all too often inexperienced. They would be sent to a rural school  as their first appointment. (The Education Department could send teachers anywhere in the state.) They would be expected to drive the buses as well as teach all day. The facilities and resources were, to put it politely, limited.

Somehow some of us managed to get an education and went on to become teachers, doctors, members of parliament, lawyers, bankers and the like. We also missed out on a lot of the distractions available to our fellow students in the city. Perhaps that meant we put more time into study - when our services were not required on the farm or helping out elsewhere.

But in the city there were "high schools" and "technical high schools". The latter were usually single sex because they provided facilities for woodwork and metalwork or cookery and dressmaking. Girls could leave ready to take up roles in offices and child care. Boys could leave and take up an apprenticeship in any number of industries.

Then came the idea that students who went to technical high schools were somehow being discriminated against, that it was unacceptable to suggest that less able students attended such schools. It was thought that this prevented them from possibly attending university. Yes, all students had the right to aim for university. We were told it was wrong to prevent anyone from achieving that goal. We are still being told that.

We are being told that even though a former governor of this state is a graduate of one of the technical high schools. He went on to be a very successful man indeed. I know another, one of the Senior Cat's cousins, who went on to be Apprentice of the Year and then on to be at the very top of the oil industry. (Not perhaps where you might want to be now but oil was acceptable at the time.) There are others who have gone on to own businesses and become multi-millionaires. Going to a "technical high school" did not prevent them from succeeding. It was almost certainly what allowed them to succeed. It gave them skills they could put to use. 

Of course doing away with technical high schools, especially when they were single sex, has also meant saving a great deal of money on facilities. There is no need to provide the woodwork and metalwork facilities and equipment. The cookery kitchens have gone and much more with them. We like to pretend that everyone is getting "an equal opportunity" to attend university while forgetting that dentists and doctors need buildings to work in and plumbing to wash their hands. We forget that the courts still need stenographers and security staff.  All of us need to eat and that means buying food grown by farmers and distributed by drivers. I could go on. Anyone able to read this will sometimes have thought of those things. 

Why then is it that the education system fails to recognise what seems to me to be obvious? Not everyone needs to go to university. Some people do not want to go. They find other ways of succeeding or are simply content to be the people they are.