A Place for Everyone - Part One

In the classical age, unemployment was not necessarily the same issue it is for us.  Anyone who has noted the details in the Christian New Testament is aware that the Apostle Paul was both a lawyer and a tentmaker, a double skill that came in handy wherever demand for either skill was running low.  It was fairly commonplace at that time to be trained in both technical and industrial skills, somewhat like being both an electrical engineer and a skilled auto mechanic simultaneously.  In our highly technical age, of course, twin occupations are hard to come by; the knowledge base for each requires your full attention. And that has implications for the structure of the whole society.

That thought came to mind when “reading and comparing” two articles on education and employment this past week. Because the topic is complex, I’m dividing my post into two, with discussion of the second article in a subsequent post.   In the first article, in the New York Times, about differences in employment in a French and a German town just across the border from each other, the Times was delving into why two towns only about twenty miles apart were so vastly different in their economies. The German town of Emmendingen has an unemployment rate of 3 percent, while unemployment in Selestat, twenty miles away in Alsace is at 8 percent. The Times, and apparently Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, credit “the German System” for reducing hourly labor costs in Germany 11 percent below those of France, though many French are not buying that, since it involves things like no minimum wage, more reliance on part-time labor, less worker benefits, etc.; some French mutter,  “we had the German system in 1945 – no thanks!”  Another comment was that, “Germans live to work, while the French work to live.”  It made one remember Germany’s efforts to reform Greece, and wonder how far away the French Debt Crisis is.

But a major thrust of the article had to do with differences in the educational systems of the two countries.  France’s system is much like that of the U.S., with focus all through K-12 on a common track leading toward college.  In Germany, students are “sharply divided” at age 16 between the college bound and those destined for a highly developed apprentice system in industry.  As a consequence, German workers are highly skilled, aware of their place in the scheme of things and accepting of the labor conditions of “the German System.”  It is tempting to admire such an approach until one reflects about the low social mobility implicit in it.  Having one’s future laid out at sixteen is not all that appealing.  “Made in Germany” is not an export mark attractive on all goods, particularly when they involve the education of one’s children.