Labor Day is a somewhat curious holiday. Created to honor and recognize the American labor movement and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United States, it has become at least as well-known as a long weekend marking the end of summer and the beginning the school year – a combined celebration of work, leisure and education.
I’ve been spending the end of summer and beginning of school year on the State Board of Education’s Kansans Can Success Tour, listening to thousands of Kansans talk about what young people need to know and be able to do to be successful after they leave the school system. Much of this conversation has been about the changing nature of labor.
Labor Day was recognized about 125 years ago, when the industrial revolution was moving millions of American workers from farms and small “craft” work to factories, a trend that continued to the middle of the last century. This transformation was a massive shift to standardized production that mostly asked of workers the ability to reliably perform the same repetitive tasks, like installing a part on an assembly line.
The increased efficiency of this system combined with the American labor movement to create lower costs and higher wages for workers with relatively low skill levels. It supported a retail industry that employed many other Americans to do other fairly simple tasks: stock shelves, run a cash register – and even service jobs were generally “lower tech” – processing forms, running a switchboard. A fairly small percentage of the population went to college for professional and some managerial jobs. The result was the cherished idea of most Americans living in a broad “middle class” – not rich, but certainly not poor.
By the time I was in school, another great change was underway, led by automation of many jobs and outsourcing of many others. In 1975, two-thirds of American workers had only a high school diploma or had not graduated, and just 15 percent had a four-year degree or higher (the rest had less than four years of college, or a technical certificate).
By 2019, just one-third of workers had a high school diploma or less; two-third of workers had some type of postsecondary education; and over 30 percent had four years of college or more. (These are statistics for WORKERS; Americans without a high school diploma or some type of postsecondary training are far more likely to be unemployed with no income.) Moreover, virtually ALL income growth since 1975 went to workers with postsecondary education, while wages for less skilled workers have been flat or worse for 50 years.
I thought of a simple illustration when returning home after one of the education meetings. When I first started driving the state’s highways, no one could get on the Kansas turnpike without a person – a worker – handing out a ticket, and no one could get off without handing a person money to pay the toll. Today, most of those jobs have disappeared. (Turnpike signs say workers are needed, but I haven’t personally seen one since getting a KTAG.) If you are my age, think of all the jobs that used to exist – and pay reasonable wages in communities across Kansas – but have been eliminated because a machine (usually powered by a computer) has replaced it.
Of course, those jobs have been a least partly replaced by new ones designing those machines and programing those computers. But the requirements of those jobs are dramatically different.
The result has divided a broad middle class between a rising class of individuals with higher paying, high skill jobs for those with higher education, and a growing class of lower paid, underemployed or unemployed individuals with less education. One example: while overall Kansas personal income has far outpaced inflation since 1990, the percent of children on free and reduced-price meals has increased from around one-third to nearly half.
For decades, education was a way to “lift all boats.” Now, education is a key predictor of income and poverty, and poverty is the largest single negative influence on educational achievement. This means low-income children are increasingly likely to remain low-income as adults if they fail to acquire the academic and other skills to succeed in postsecondary education and the workforce.
The academic difference between low-income and non-low-income students is dramatic on every measure. But the most numerous concerns expressed by Kansans in community meetings and business focus groups in 2015 – confirmed by the Kansans Can tour this year – were not about basic academic skills. Instead, they focus on a broader range of competencies in three areas.
First are personal qualities, such as self-discipline, dependability, perseverance, planning, self-care and integrity. Second are interpersonal skills, such as collaboration, speaking and listening, empathy and networking. Third are cognitive, which includes not only basic skills but the ability to apply them in the real world, such as problem-solving, critical and creative thinking.
Not only has the 2021 tour reaffirmed that these are competencies students need and are many times lacking, but participants overwhelming say schools need to help teach them. Why this broader the focus?
One reason is the changing nature of work. These skills are quite different than when schools were expected to educate a workforce in which most jobs were simpler, more repetitive and able to be memorized, and directed by others. Schools mostly taught “facts” and measured whether students could repeat them on a test, delivered in uniform blocks of time that were pretty much the same every day. Now, workers are increasingly asked to be self-directed but also work with others; be creative and solve problems; and carry out duties that change frequently and rapidly. Schools are being asked to adopt to a workforce that is constantly changing.
A second reason is that many of those non-academic skills used to be taught, modeled, or reinforced by institutions that have dramatically changed: family, church, youth organizations, part-time jobs, neighborhood sports. Another example: I was a boy scout; the number of scouts has dropped in half since the 1970 while the school-aged population is about the same. Families are more stressed; more parents are working with less time for family activities I took for granted. Fewer opportunities for part-time jobs for students exist (you don’t need paper boys if you don’t print and deliver papers). School sports and activities foster many of these characteristics, but only for students willing and able to participate. Many educators say their greatest challenges from many students are behavioral issues.
Of course, many students acquire the academic skills to move successfully into higher education, and acquire those other qualities, sometimes in school but also with family support and experiences, a wide range of school and non-school activities, and opportunities to develop social skills. I find many young adults far more impressive than I recall myself and my peers at that age. But many students do NOT acquire that range of skills, meaning they will struggle to earn at least a middle-class income and leave Kansas without the workforce to meet its economic needs, and eroding the social fabric of many communities.
This Labor Day, the Kansans Can tour is reaffirming that the next generation of Kansas workers will need a broader set of skills than some students are now learning, both for their own economic security and to do the jobs Kansas needs done. Part of that role will fall to schools, because in some cases they are the only institutions with the capacity to do it.
However, schools certainly can’t do it alone. They will need to partner with parents, communities, and employers. They will have to give a greater voice to students themselves, recognizing their needs and interests. They will have to work more closely with employers and colleges to help students make those traditions.
None of this will be easy, because it means changing how schools operate. But it can mean a better future for the next generation of students – and workers. Happy Labor Day!
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