I am struck by what seems to me to be an increasingly prevelent phenomenon: that of middle class kids rejecting their parent’s expectations , rejecting higher education, and adopting blue-collars behaviours. Take a friend of mine: both he and his wife are college graduates (his wife has a graduate degree). Their son, dropped out of high school, and works as an auto boy repairman. The kid has no interest in learnng , and prefers the company of blue collar friends; drinks in dive bars, etc.
ll of this has his parents quite upset. I’d be too-because it seems that most people want their kids to be better off than thmselves-what makes kids reject middle class values? 
Maybe if a kid has parents with high incomes, they don’t understand the cost of living? Affluent mommies and daddies have always paid the way, and maybe now the kid even feels entitled to future financial help and he doesn’t see the need to make a lot of money.
Or maybe they’re just slackers. My 14-year-old really and truly believes that his secondary education will consist of trade school and being a computer technician for ten dollars an hour. Why, that’s a whole $400 a week- plenty for a single dude that’s never going to get married or have children… but I expect that he’ll mature and his feelings on that will change. If he’s 19 and still feels that way, we might have a problem.
Isn’t this found in all walks of life, and since the beginning of time? We see kids struggling to put themselves through college when the parents couldn’t care less. Of course that’s seen as a positive because we see it as the kid rising above his roots.
Maybe their kid just isn’t college material. People try to put a lot of safe-guards in place-reading to the child from birth, sending them to good schools, and enrolling them in enriching activities, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll get a kid who loves to learn. Part of the problem is that there’s too much pressure for average joes to excel in a certain way, when they might not be cut out for it. What is wrong with earning an honest living at a blue collar job? I know lots of people want something different for their kids, but I don’t think it should be seen as something horrible. Or, maybe he’s just lazy. Who knows.
It’s called “slumming” and it’s existed since the beginning of time.
This some kind of combo auto shop and bathhouse?
There is no shame in working with your hands. In some cases people that work in blue collar jobs can out earn many people in white collar jobs. I know quite a few automotive technicians that make in excess of $100,000 per year.
I had several white collar jobs. I never seemed to go anywhere. Finally I said screw it, I am going to do what I want to do. I went into auto repair. From there to a Volvo dealer, from there to working for the factory.
My only regret is that I did not do it sooner.
My parents (both college grads) supported my choices.
People talk about middle class values but they never explain what they mean. I grew up in a middle class family and it didn’t seem like our values differed all that much from the working class people that we lived and worked with. Be polite. Get educated. Stay on the right side of the law. Work hard. Don’t rock the boat. Support the family. Perhaps ambition is a “middle class” value, but doesn’t everyone, regardless of class, aspire to something bigger? And not all middle-class people value the same things.
The middle-class doesn’t hold a monopoly on admirable qualities, anyway. Let’s take the kid in the OP. What makes him more fundamentally a failure than a kid who spends their colllege summers backpacking in Europe, spending their parents’ money, only to come home and work at Starbucks for several years until they figure out what they want to do with their estoteric liberal arts degree? While I think the kid in the OP would have done better enrolling in a voc ed program before dropping out, I admire him more than I do the above. He’s doing what he wants to do and making strides in supporting himself. As long as he’s staying healthy and lawful, the parents shouldn’t be too upset (although I can understand their disappointment).
I haven’t noticed any generational backlash, but perhaps it’s a reaction to all the ridiculous pressure that face middle class kids. Seventh graders shouldn’t have college on their mind, but nowadays they’re lining up to take the PSAT. If you aren’t in AP something by the tenth grade, that means you’re a retard who can’t get into college. If such fierce competition is a middle-class value, I think it’s more of a vice than a virtue.
I guess I don’t see this as a terrible problem. If the kid wants to be an auto repair guy, and isn’t cut out for higher education, why shouldn’t he do what he wants? Not everyone needs to go to college. As long as he’s taking care of himself, I don’t see the problem. If, later on, he decides he wants to go to college after all, he can–and would probably be a better student for it.
ralph124c, do you actually have any statistics to show this phenomenon has been increasing in recent years? I don’t see any such thing happening. There always has been a certain amount of this going on, there always will be a certain amount of it, and unless you have statistics to show that it’s happening more often these days, there’s really nothing to discuss here.
I’ve always thought it was too bad that there is such a stigma on trade school.
College is a good example of “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”.
A lot of degrees end up being a waste of money because they don’t really teach you any true job skills.
I’d probably feel better about my kid’s ability to provide for him/herself if they had gone to trade school than if they were getting a degree in something like, say, philosophy. 
I have a solid working/middle-middle class upbringing with a full scholarship to a nice university but I spend my time in pool halls with my pothead heavy metal friends. Now what?
How funny you said that. My boyfriend graduated last year with a degree in Music Education, went to Europe for some weeks one summer, spent an asston of his great-grandma’s money at a private school, and now works for Starbucks.
On a side note, not everyone is college material, IMHO. Some of the people I have classes with (with whom I have classes), cannot write or express ideas at all. Presentations consist of copied-and-pasted Wikipedia articles, read verbatim. I just think that some people go to college based on societal expectations, not because they really want to. (FWIW, I don’t want to go to college. I just have a bunch of student loans to pay back, so I’d better finish, go to pharmacy school, and at least do something interesting that I like while I pay them back.
Yep, a college degree is teh GARONTEEE!! that you will succeed in life. :rolleyes:
What makes you think he isn’t learning doing what he’s doing? You bust your ass physically, and learn a heapload of shit while doing it. It’s not slacker work, unless you’re still changing oil and mounting tires after 10 years and it’s all you do…
I totally agree with this. Why does getting some worthless degree in sociology or Women’s Studies make you a better person than having a trade that is in demand? I’d much rather have my son be a mechanic and a decent human being than an educated jerk.
Ph.D., here BTW…
It wasn’t about education, it was about class. Before the GI Bill, someone who hired a college grad hired someone who was “one of us”, and likely had business and social connections which could be useful. Hell of a lot more useful than a liberal arts degree. And it provided a plausible barrier, you shovel the shit, he watches you do it, because he’s got an education.
But I disagree at bottom with the whole notion of education as a form of training for employment, we should educate our people to be better informed citizens, rather than a more erudite work force. By its very nature, a democracy demands a better informed citizenry, if it is to fulfill its promise.
Besides, whats wrong with a mechanic who knows a Moebius strip from a fan belt?
Myself, I’m an obsessive auto-didact with a motley variety of occupations. Worked with friends for a while in construction, proved my friendship by resigning. I just wasn’t any good at it, loved tools, still do, but ten thumbed work gloves are hard to find.
But there isn’t anything as satisfying as building something, no matter how many zeros on your paycheck.
The son is working - full time?
He likes drinking with his friends, who are presumably the people he works with. Who go to bars that aren’t pretentious and/or charge $8 for a pink drink in a fussy little glass.
There’s nothing wrong with being blue collar. At least the kid is working, he’s pulling in a paycheque, he’s learning a mechanical trade and he’s getting along and socialising with people.
I’d have less respect for him if he were a perpetual student - always in college, only going to enough classes to barely pass the minimum reqs, drinking every night and expecting mommy and daddy to give him an allowance.
I’d also have less respect for him if he’d dropped out of highschool to live in his parent’s basement and smoke dope all day or (in countries with more lenient social security payments) to dole bludge all day.
Someone needs to fix cars, unblock drains, fix pipes, make furniture etc. etc. He’s got a trade, he can get a job nearly anywhere with that trade, and in the future possibly make a whole heap of money. I can’t get on board with OP here.
And here I am, going to an expensive private school to learn… how to do a job that’ll have me doing some manual labor for at least a decade after I graduate. Sigh.
I don’t really understand why the parents are upset. The job market is wacky right now - I don’t see having a college degree ensuring employment anymore. It’s every man for themselves.
There are lots and lots and lots of jobs that need to be done by people with associates degrees and certifications. And jobs for people who work under them.
My college degreed ass sits at a desk all day, and every so often (more often than I’d like) I pay people with associates degrees and certificates oodles of money to come take care of all the fancy things I buy with my college degree paycheck - car, furnace/AC, plumbing, electricity, yard, driveway - you name it. And, lots of times, those expensive people bring out the kids who make $10/hr to lift heavy things and clean up after them.
No shame in that, at all. It takes all sorts of skills to make the world go 'round.
I completely agree about the monopoly part. However, I do think that there are certain life values that you are more likely to see in middle-class families over working class families. People in the middle class tend to value white-collar jobs over blue-collar jobs that may actually pay more money, they tend to delay marriage for college and grad school, and tend to value living near your extended family over moving for your career. I’m not saying these values are better, just that there is a disparity on class lines – if you meet an unmarried woman with a PhD in Art History, living with roommate in Brooklyn and working at a museum, then dollars to donuts both her parents went to college. (Of course now that I’ve said this I’m sure such a doper will surface and tell me about how her parents owned a gas station)
Anyhow, totally agree with the rest – regarding the story in the OP, it’s not like he dropped out to be a rock star, for all we know he may own a house in five years. I’m sure he already owns and cares for his own car. FTR, I’m also in the over-educated class.
Yeah, another person saying “good for him.” When I was in high school (early 2000s), there were posters everywhere begging us to go into the trades. If I were any good with my hands, I would have probably done it myself.
My mother was a huge snob. Loved my fiance-eventually to be husband a great deal, but never got over the fact that he was going to school to be a carpenter. I was definitely marrying beneath myself.
Yeah, whatever. She died early, before she saw what being in the trades actually means.
ralph124c, I can almost guarantee I make more money than you. A lot more. I probably live in a nicer house, hang out with a nicer group of folks, and my kids go to better schools. Not only that, but we’re pretty happy most of the time.
You can take your college educated cubicle farm for $40,000 a year and stuff it.
ETA- my sister in law, whom I love dearly, has a master’s in education from a pretty well known college. Her college tuition bill was over $400,000. She started teaching high school English at about $32,000. Do the math. It’s definitely a calling for her, and there were some parents and scholarships involved, but it’s a hard sell to the general public.