Since I was a young boy, I have always “known” I would go to college. In fact, for many years, I really didn’t even think it was an option. This thought process didn’t just apply to me either; I was under the assumption that anybody that was a somebody got to where they were only after they went through at least four years at a university.
This first assumption I had led to another assumption: anyone who did not graduate from college was no more than a low life, forced to work an unskilled, meaningless job, with a slim chance at a “normal”(whatever I thought that was) life. Like many of the assumptions I make, this one led to an awkward situation that led to a transition in my opinion.
I was being introduced to the parents of a girl I was dating — or whatever you call it when you’re 13. The girl had told me her father went to Mississippi State, so I asked her mother if she attended here as well.
Imagine the horror I felt when she told me that not only had she not gone to Mississippi State but to no college at all.
I was mortified. How could this middle-upper class, Caucasian woman, who seemed to have everything together and such a normal, prosperous life not have gone to college?
I guess my surprise showed because her mother began to explain to me that not everyone goes to college, and, actually, we would be in quite a predicament if everyone did. It took a few years to really comprehend this, but it is undoubtedly true.
Think what you would do with your trash if no one came to pick it up for you. What if you lived in an apartment building; where would the literal tons of trash go? Yeah, pretty disgusting to think about. It’s probably safe to say that there are very few “trash men” that went to college, but their duty, that is usually overlooked, leaves our world much more sanitary and livable.
For the men in my readership: despite what you might say (or think), let’s level here and admit that most of us have very little knowledge when it comes to automobiles, at least if you are like me. I can read the gauges and change the fluids, but, other than that, I am pretty lost.
So if my girlfriend and I break down on the side of the road and all the gauges check out, I would literally be stuck and quite embarrassed.
Thankfully, there is a great group of people often referred to as car mechanics. Bring your motorized vehicle to these heaven-sent magicians in the morning, and, depending on the problem and the number of other people counting on them, get it back that afternoon. Again, I think it’s safe to assume most of these mechanics did not attend an accredited university.
Of course, with the recession, unemployment is hitting record highs. In October, the overall unemployment in the U.S. was said to be at 9.6 percent. Of that percentage, the difference between unemployment in white-collar and blue-collar workers is incredible.
Among college graduates, there is a 4.5 percent unemployment rate, while it’s 10.8 percent for those with a high school diploma, and 14.3 percent among those without one, according to Market Watch.
This may be due to the lack of attention being paid to their plight.
In his book “Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class,” Jefferson Cowie examines the beginning of the end of the working class.
Cowie argues that there has been a tremendous shift, “from when the concerns of working people dominated the headlines to our own time, when they have less place in our civic imaginations than any time since the industrial revolution.”
With technological advances, the “assembly line worker” is slowly becoming obsolete. This diminishing will obviously hurt the class that these workers make up, and possibly make it disappear all together.
That means no “real” middle class, only lower and upper. Hopefully America, realizes the problems that a two-class system will present and turn their focus back to the workingman. Without them, we’d be lost.
Micah Green is a junior majoring in communication. He can be contacted at
[email protected].