Since when do kids have to have the same tastes, interests, and aptitudes as their parents?
If the kid really does have “no interest in learning” it’s probably a good thing he’s not going to school, making his teachers and himself miserable, and training for a career he’s not at all suited for or interested in.
Maybe he’s just going through a phase. Or maybe that’s just the way he is. It takes all kinds to make a world.
Galton’s example of regression toward the mean with regard to parental height is saying essentially the same thing I was, except w/r/t occupational status rather than height. Parents of above average height tend to have children shorter than they are (closer to the mean height). The analogy is to parents of above average status occupations tending to have lower status occupations than they have.
I made a hobby out of attending college for ~13 years ( first five full-time ), but even if I had ever bothered to finish either or both of my degrees ( in biology and history ), I almost certainly wouldn’t have made more than 40-50% of my current Trades job. Or if I did, not without putting in 20 years in the trenches, working my way up into a supervisory position to get close.
As it is, if I’m feeling energetic I can retire with ~90% of my salary at 54 and get a second job to become a prosperous double-dipper. If I’m feeling lazy, I can retire at 57 with essentially 100% of a six-figure income and spend my time fucking off even more than I do now. My co-worker on shift ( degree in marine biology, never finished near-degree in civil engineeering 
) is in the same boat, having started at the same age.
Meanwhile my father, who has a PhD in physics, could care less about my career path. Sure he wanted me to study philosophy in Finland ( and that, folks, is not entirely a joke 
) when I was a youngster. But he’s pretty happy how I turned out. But then he grew up on a subsistence farm, the son of a coalminer and has quite the array of ( intelligent ) blue collar friends. More than me - most of my friends have degrees and all but two make considerably less than I do ( one’s neck and neck, the other is just now starting to pull away as she advances into corporate upper-management ).
There’s no shame in being a mechanic. And for that matter there’s nothing saying you can’t be an intellectual dilettante at the same time if you want to. I’ve managed it ;).
edited to add: And needless to say there’s no shame if you never have any pretensions to being an intellectual. I know some damn good, smart people who are not.
Not to sound callous or anything, but not everyone was meant to become rocket scientists and lawyers. Some people become doctors, others are baggers at the grocery store. Even within my family we have a wide variety of jobs; some of my cousins became accountants and some didn’t even care to graduate high school. Are the parents of the girl scraping by as a hostess disappointed in her? Probably, but it’s her life. If people are happy with their lifestyle and it isn’t hurting others, then I don’t see the problem with it.
I don’t see why college is such a big deal. There are plenty of people making good money out there without a college education. There are professions that require college though, like teacher, doctor, etc.
I think white collar jobs are potentially less satisfying. I sit in front of a computer, most of my work is non-tangible. People coming home from blue collar jobs have built cars, poured concrete, made burgers, fixed cars, they make a tangible difference.
For so many years we were brainwashed into thinking that the only way to a good career was through a 4 year college degree to the point that now a college degree is almost useless except . of course, for professional degrees.
The other problem is expecting teens to choose what they want to do with the rest of their lives before they know anything about the real world and before they even know anything about what they really want.
We told our son, who is intelligent but not a good student, that his best bet is a two year degree in something he is interested in now. If he wants more education later or even to study something completely different he can do it at any time but meanwhile he has a skill and a decent paying career.
I certainly chose the wrong degree for myself at that age and worked myself to exhaustion studying and paying for it I wish I had gone to community college first and lived in the world a little before going to 4 year college.
I’d be more than happy to take this elsewhere since I think your contribution to this thread is valuable. In a nutshell, though, this is not true. Neither income nor occupational status are normally distributed nor are they heritable. Lastly, the single biggest predictor of a child’s future income is his parents’ incomes, so the correlation between the two variables is very high. The higher the correlation, the more vanishing is the effect of regression toward the mean.
Carry on anyway. 
That’s true, but for every plumber who retires at 50, there will be a tradesman who has to work until he’s not physically capable of doing so. It’s kind of dumb to judge a profession by how likely it is to make you rich, anyway, but really it’s not like the skilled trades are Where The Money’s At, especially for someone without a diploma.
This is true, I think the lack of the diploma could come back and haunt him. However, a good auto body mechanic might be able to overcome that and do well enough in life.
I think college is important. It isn’t just about learning a skill, though you can certianly do that in college, it is about becoming a well rounded individual. I got through 4 years of school for $25k, including books and dorm and everything, and graduated with no debt. I had partial scholarships, my parents chipped in, and I worked my way through school. I spent my first 2 years at a community college. I learned a lot about many different subjects as well as learning to be an adult someplace where the stakes weren’t as high and failure didn’t equal homelessness or poverty. Now I am a fully functioning, successful adult and I can talk to people from many different walks of life with many different areas of expertise and hold my own in conversation with almost anyone, which I may not have been able to do without those years of study.
Much of what I learned in school has been very helpful in my life even though it has no direct bearing on my career. Beyond that, I get paid more for the job I have because I have a degree and can demand that kind of money even though my degree is in broadcasting and I work in insurance. This isn’t to say you can’t make good money without a degree because you certianly can, but typically you will find that even if you do decide to become a mechanic or a plumber you will earn more with a degree and it will be easier to move up the chain and do less demanding work for more money if you have that degree as a starting point.
Those people who simply do not enjoy school or do not feel like they need to make a go of college certianly shouldn’t feel forced into going, but they don’t need to get the idea that they will make so much more than their friends who went to school for another 4 years simply because it can, in some instances, be done. They should expect to work hard in much more physically demanding jobs than their college friends. You can make a very good living without a degree but you open a lot of doors for yourself if you invest that time and energy into getting one.
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said, but let’s be realistic here. You sound like a down-to-Earth, responsible individual. For many kids college is a 4-year party that their parents pay for.
I think given the choice, aptitude and finances, going to college is better. Posters are just trying to make a point that despite being important and useful, it guarantees nothing and people who choose to go into trades should not be looked down upon.
Jim
I think this is true and, to be perfectly honest, it has always been this way. You get out of it what you put in.
I’ve always agreed as well - there should be an avenue to trade schools in about 10th grade if you couldn’t care less about English Literature and Humanities and know you aren’t going to college and would prefer to learn a real skill.
And I disagree with anyone who says people won’t make money in trades - I’m a Ph.D. and my wife’s a doctor, and we paid the floor guy about 5X what we made in that same amount of time - granted he had 3 or 4 workers to pay, and materials, and overhead, but I’d still bet he came out even if not better than the both of us combined. I’m sure his income is highly variable, but regardless, for a trade it’s not a bad life.