Rothenburger — Teachers might come back in vogue some day

COLUMN — Regional district director Ken Gillis was in fine fettle Friday, if you’ll excuse the alliteration.

Jim Anderson and Colin O’Leary of Venture Kamloops were at a TNRD workshop explaining a new regional economic study they’re setting up. The meeting started ahead of schedule so I didn’t catch the whole thing but I did hear Gillis responding to the presentation.

Gillis wondered out loud if post secondary institutions could be made “on pain of death” to focus on areas of study that will lead to jobs “rather than virtually useless university degrees.”

There are way too many graduates who aren’t needed because they have the wrong skills, he said. “We keep cranking out school teachers like sausages.”

Ouch. Teachers, many of whom are feeling financially pinched right now as they man their lawn chairs on the picket lines, aren’t going to like that sort of talk.

True, as Gillis noted, there are currently thousands more teachers in B.C. than there are teaching positions. As has been pointed out during the BCTF strike, there are more than 69,000 qualified teachers and only 30,000 jobs for them to fill.

Gillis also mentioned social workers. I don’t know the numbers on social workers but Daphne Bramham wrote a good column in the Vancouver Sun recently saying that one in three B.C. social workers doesn’t have the minimum qualifications set out in provincial legislation.

She said B.C. has 10 schools of social work “so supply shouldn’t be a problem.”

TRU has a Bachelor of Social work degree and so does Nicola Valley Institute of Technology. So maybe social work wasn’t a good example, or maybe it was, but I’m almost certain teachers would rather not be likened to sausages.

We’ve all heard about useless degrees, and there’s the never-ending argument about whether a Bachelor of Arts is good for anything at all. The Daily Beast compiled a list of the 20 most useless degrees based on job availability and pay. You’re probably thinking philosophy and English, but English is only number 19 and, shockingly, philosophy isn’t even on the list.

Fine arts is 17th. In fifth spot is fashion design, while advertising is fourth, agriculture third and horticulture second. It really pains me to tell you that, according to The Daily Beast, the very worst degree you can get these days is…. Journalism. And, yes, you can get one of those at TRU.

What about those philosophy degrees? Once mocked as being good for nothing, they’re now regarded in some circles as being better than a degree in business administration if you want a career in business. Of course, one of the reasons is that philosophy majors are better than business majors at getting into business grad schools.

I’ll leave it to the likes of Dr. Alan Shaver, the president of TRU, to figure out why. He frequently talks about making TRU the “first modern university.”

Here’s the point. Universities, first of all, should only be partly about jobs. They should also be about learning about life and being a good citizen of the world and all that.

Secondly, things change. I think it was Terry O’Reilly on his Under the Influence show on CBC radio who mentioned just a week or two ago the famous scene in The Graduate.

“I just want to say one word to you,” Mr. McGuire says to Benjamin Braddock, played by Dustin Hoffman. “Just one word.”

“Yes, sir,” says Benjamin.

“Are you listening?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Plastics,” says Mr. McGuire.

A confused Benjamin asks, “Exactly how do you mean?”

See, in 1967, plastic wasn’t as important as it is now. Toys were made of metal. There were no plastic guns. No plastic cars or garbage cans. Milk came in glass bottles. People took their groceries home in paper bags.

Talking plastic was crazy talk. Benjamin didn’t know it, but it was the future. Things change.

Teachers and social workers might come back in vogue some day.

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