Funding real educational needs as we rebuild the national economy

The end of World War II was, really, the end of the Great Depression. And at the end of the war, the nation was in need of qualified people to rebuild the economy and translate the benefits of the intellectual property we took as spoils of war from Germany and Japan and generate new income to make America strong once again. So, America came up with the GI Bill and universities were swamped with applicants that were steered into professions geared for the second half of the 20th century.

Out of the GI Bill walked engineers, doctors, rocket scientists, electrical scientists, physicists, accountants and, never least, lawyers to write the rules for — and run — the new economy. What we saw were wonderful, optimistic fins on cars, the race to the moon, giant leaps in aviation (commercial jets and supersonic flight), the first computers, printed circuits, new alloys, new drugs, new plastics, new highways — in fact, everything was new again. That’s the American tradition.

Our president has proposed a massive investment to get us out of the economic downturn we are experiencing. Part of that package is education for both young and older kids. My problem is the word education is too broad and, like a shotgun, is far less useful to the economic recovery than a sniper’s rifle for accurate placement of the stimulus educational funds.

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America has to get over the snobbery of higher education. Sixty-five percent of the people undertaking higher education are women. That’s a good thing. The question is: Are we teaching them anything useful? Are we guiding them to the innovations sitting on Department of Defense and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) shelves that could, mimicking the German war effort intellectual property after World War II, really stimulate the whole economy?

Just from my small perspective, I can swear that I saw planes flying in 1986 at Edwards Air Force Base that, to this day, have never been revealed to the public and were, quite amazingly, decades ahead of what you think of as cutting edge. So too with nanotechnology, biochemistry, stem cell research and communication. Clearly these are not decades ahead in invention, just implementation.

And implementation is what education is supposed to be about for 95 percent of us (the rest need the theoretical pathway already in place). Whatever happened to trade schools? Whatever happened to engineering schools? These were respectable, honorable, places of higher learning, specialist learning.

I don’t know about you, but I would prefer kids becoming specialists at something tangible than taking four years to earn B.S. or B.A. degrees without any real purpose in mind. Oh, sure, the businesses of universities then want the parents or students to come up with an additional $150,000 for two years toward that “choice� master’s degree... and they call that specializing.

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The most qualified aircraft engineer I ever heard of had a high school degree only: Kelly Johnson of Lockheed Skunk Works, the SR-71 and half the advanced planes now flying. In fact, I have a higher respect for the expert welder who plasma welds the ever-spinning turbines at the bottom of the Hoover Dam than I do for some poor sap getting a B.A. in history and applying for yet another managerial position he is ill-equipped for, earning $65,000 a year.

Does his job satisfy or does he rely on money and what it can buy to measure his worth to himself? Oh, don’t worry, he’ll go to night school and get that MBA in the future, get early balding, hate his life and never produce anything of value for the country. But he’ll have a nice house and car — and gossip respect.

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In Switzerland, 65 percent of the kids going to “college� go to technical schools to become highly respected professionals: engineers, nurses, chemical engineers, mining engineers, construction engineers — people who actually produce tangible goods, make something for the benefit of all.

As long as America thinks that a white-collar education is better than solid, expert, blue-collar training, we’ll fall further behind the Chinese (who follow the German and Japanese model of respecting engineers on a social level equal with doctors).

So, Mr. President and Kirsten our new senator, consider this, please: Spend your education stimulus package where it will do the most good: higher education for qualified jobs, technology and service. Skip giving Harvard Law or Vassar B.A. programs one dime. In the end, the nation will grow a whole heck of a lot faster.

I’d love to see that time of optimism again, a time when people had productive jobs that drove them, not money as a carrot in front of a slave donkey. Please, repeat the lessons of the 1950s and we can all end up recovering our economy and our humor.

Peter Riva, formerly of Amenia Union, lives in New Mexico.