Prince stresses skills shortage
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Sacha sa...@gardenweedws506.fsnet.co.uk
The Prince of Wales says Britain's students are not being taught relevant practical skills.
Prince Charles was addressing a seminar on the future of traditional skills at Woodchester Mansion, near Stroud, Gloucestershire, on Monday.
He said many young people were leaving college without the "basic groundwork" in the subjects they were studying.
"I know through meeting lots of people from art school who are exhausted and fed up," he said.
"They are coming out with an education which is relevant but they haven't been given the real skills they need. The basic groundwork.
"I think there are probably too many courses that are not giving people the skills they need later in life and think that needs to be looked at." The Prince was speaking to delegates from the fields of architecture, stonemasonry and heritage funding.
A report by the National Heritage Training Group warned earlier this year that the heritage industry needed to recruit 6,500 skilled craftsmen to restore and maintain Britain's historical treasures in the next year alone.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/gloucestershire/4236778.stm
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Sacha (remove the weeds for email)
"Q" quond...@yahoo.commeilfaut
The BBC story doens't say which skills the Prince is talking about, and it also refers to leaving "college", which -- in the context -- means something different to people in the UK than what it means to Americans. Is he saying that people need to be taught to be plasterers, carpenters, and paper hangers while in school -- or what? -- Q
"volcaran" volcar...@aol.com
Having read a couple of other articles, I think his point was directed to course content not adequately preparing students and a need for better vocational training to ensure a skill base.
"Prospero" temp...@btiyahoo.com
Since the Prince of Wales was speaking to delegates from the field of architecture, stonemasonry and heritage funding, I think that he was reiterating and emphasising the need to rectify the dire shortage of really skilled craftsmen and women who are needed for restoration work, rather than on just producing run of the mill painters, plasterers and plumbers.
"yaffaDina Sings Elvis" yaffadi...@aol.com
And it applies to him. It'll be a shock once his mother dies and everythign he says is written by someone else. Once again, Charles shows his own appalling lack of the realities of his own life and future. And, I have to say, he comes across as just plain silly. If he had some preparation or training for his own future job, I'd understand it, but to have a job waiting that requires neither training nor sense kind of puts him well out of any area of expertise in anyone else's future. Does he think England should bring back grammar and secondary schools perhaps, keep the working cl*** where they belong --
"doing" for the more priveleged. To use a quaint Americanism: what a maroon!
yD
"volcaran" volcar...@aol.com
I think he will probably be the best trained of his recent predecessors.
That is not what he is saying at all. He is perfectly correct about the deteoriation in skill training. As an example look at apprenticeships.
20 or 30 years ago apprenticeships were commonplace with young people able to gain skill training in employment. Four year courses with day or periodic release schemes were common linked to City & Guild examinations. Until recently modern apprenticeships following from the YTS schems don't even require "job training" and lasted one or possibly two years. It is only in the past three years that this government has recognised there might be some benefit in apprentices actually having work experience to complement training such that its Taskforce recommended apprenticeships should be linked to employment.
Sacha sa...@gardenweedws506.fsnet.co.uk
On 13/9/05 15:18, in article 1126621096.546450.7...@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com, "yaffaDina Sings Elvis" This Prince of Wales will be the best trained for the job of Sovereign than any we've ever had. He is more in touch with the daily life of people of Britain than any other PoW, he meets more of them and he does more for them.
One of the great virtues of the position he is in currently is that he *can* meet people from all walks of life and that he is able to speak on the various matters that affect them, whether for good or ill.
Quite a lot of people think we should bring back grammar schools and just recently a newspaper report showed that counties that still have them have seen an upsurge in house prices. I read something about that just last week, either in the Times or the Daily Mail, IIRC, though it could have been our local paper or Country Life - pretty sure it was a newspaper, though.
What the prince is saying is absolutely correct and educators have been saying it for some time, too. We have a plethora of half-educated school and university leavers and a dearth of skilled tradesmen. There have been instances of young lawyers or doctors giving up their careers and becoming e.g. Plumbers and gas-fitters because the demand is so high that they can earn a small fortune. Just today a newspaper article says that employers are no longer impressed with graduates and degrees because they have become so debased and devalued in this country.
As the PoW was talking to people who need skilled tradesmen to do the work of building houses, cutting stone etc., it is not unreasonable to point out that those going to colleges to learn such skills need hands-on practical training to acquire them.
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Sacha (remove the weeds for email)
Sacha sa...@gardenweedws506.fsnet.co.uk
No, not while in school but while at the colleges that teach or try to teach the skills. IOW, they're learning the theory of conservation but not the actual practice, themselves. He was attending a seminar on conservation skills training at Woodchester Mansion, in Gloucestershire.
One of the few good things to come out of the fire at Windsor Castle was that the public saw for themselves how much we still need the sort of skilled craftsmen that were used in its restoration.
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Sacha (remove the weeds for email)
Jean Sue Libkind jean...@bookschlepper.net
Here in the states, people would not go to "college" to learn these trades. Rather they would apprentice to a master already in the field.
We have vocational schools where some trades are taught, ie: auto mechanics but many, particularly in the building trades, are taught right on the job.
Charles is right; we have put too much emphasis on university book learning and too little on how to lay a brick, unclog a drain and build a decent house (with 16" studs, not 20").
js
flav ...@verizon.net
Considering that both Charles & his mother have taken care that this should be so, & that Charles has been known to understand everything about his position better than those outside it the preceding paragraph is ludicrous at best.
SusanC
flav ...@verizon.net
By the time I thought of doing this myself, it was too late for me to be apprenticed - or so I was told. Looking back, I think someone didn't want a woman doing that work....
My house is 14 on center, if not 16, & I won't give it up, no matter how small it is.
SusanC
Sacha sa...@gardenweedws506.fsnet.co.uk
The people going to these colleges are learning specialist work - with the emphasis on specialist, I think. I widened the scope of trades that are needed in this country to emphasise that the PoW is not trying to 'keep people down' but to show that we do need good tradesmen and we lack them.
And we lack experts in the restoration of old buildings. But if you're going to employ others or work with others who do gold-leafing, wood carving, liming of stonework, repair of wattle and daub etc. you do need to know a bit of how it's done to be sure it's done properly! AND I think you need to learn how to do it to a sufficiently high standard as to be able to turn your hand to it and not be ashamed.
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Sacha (remove the weeds for email)
"Tee" crappolagozh...@netscape.net
Unless colleges try to teach auto mechanics by book only and don't utilize a shop (place to experiment) then I can see the point, otherwise I'm lost.
Are doctors taught their careers in school without labs?
I'm not sure the reverse is true anywhere. You go to school to *learn* about something, to gain the knowledge needed to apply on the job, not to gain on-the-job skills.
That's fine but people have to *want* to be a tradesman and then they have to prove they have an aptitude for it...or vice versa. In this country we have a ton of tradesman because that's what we can learn without going to college. They don't pay nearly as well as most degreed careers do which is why, as a kid, you hear constant dire warnings about not going to college.
Tradesman, for the most part, are solidly middle cl***, often lower middle cl***, often struggling and living week to week. Unless the supply of tradesman always stays much lower than the demand such people will make peanuts in comparison to the amount of effort & time they put into their jobs. Undervalued, underpaid & underappreciated is pretty much the way of the average tradesman in the US.
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Tara
"Tee" crappolagozh...@netscape.net
The Mirror prints additional comments to the speech, comments which change the meaning significantly IMO.
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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16122864&method=full&siteid=... CHARLES: STUDENTS ARE NOT TAUGHT REAL SKILLS By Nathan Yates, Royal Reporter PRINCE Charles called yesterday for more students to be taught practical subjects instead of academic ones.
He said many are "pushed down the wrong route" at school and finish up "fed up at not getting what they want out of life".
He added: "They are coming out with an education which is relevant but they haven't been given the real skills they need, the basic groundwork. There are too many courses that are not giving people the skills they need later in life and I think that needs to be looked at." He went on: "I think it's partly because so many have been pushed down the wrong route and they find themselves pushed into academic fields where they are simply not suited to that.
"And dying to come out are these technical and manual skills which I have the greatest admiration for." Charles, who has five O levels, two A levels and a history degree, said more must be done to encourage people to learn traditional building skills.
Advertisement He was talking to guests at a seminar at Woodchester Mansion, near Stroud, Glos - which was abandoned unfinished by the builders 130 years ago after the owner died and the money ran out.
Charles is patron of the trust set up to preserve the mansion, which runs its own apprenticeship scheme for stonemasons.
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I'm sure this is going to raise hackles with some but my immediate impression after reading this is that Charles has just reiterated the very sentiment that landed him in so much hot water over the Ms. Day memo.
The BBC's version suggests he's only talking about a lack of skill learning.
The Mirror's version suggests more.
He sounds like he's saying too many people are aspiring to professional careers when they should really be tradesman. Professional vs Tradesman has a cl*** connotation in most countries and its the latter that's lower cl***.
Therefore the inference is that too many people are trying to rise above their station rather staying down where they belong.
Just out of curiosity, does a medical professional or business major make more or less money than a carpenter or plumber in your country? Which one carries more prestige?
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"volcaran" volcar...@aol.com
I don't think he is saying that at all. I would refer you to my earlier posts in the thread.
It depends.
Jean Sue Libkind jean...@bookschlepper.net
No, the observation that Charles has his "own appalling lack of the realities of his own life and future" has p***ed from the ridiculous to the sublime.
js
"yaffaDina Sings Elvis" yaffadi...@aol.com
And the 'technical' or old secondary schools was exactly where many working cl*** children were "pushed" because they were working cl***.
You have to remember that bettering oneself is not an admirable quality to many English -- especially those who are born into privelege. As a working cl*** person who went to university I know this from my family and my neighbors, not to mention being considered an expert on some of the social history cl***es we took.
But a "skilled craftsman" is not just a plumber, it's things like roof thatching, a dying industry because slate is used not thatch. One might ask why the middle cl*** (British cl*** system) doesn't produce plumbers and car mechanics. Perhaps mummy and daddy don't think it good enough for the child of a brain surgeon or lawyer, a judge, or a QC to be a plumber any more than the child of a plumber is encouraged to go on to be a brain surgeon.
But these comments coming from someone who needs no training whatsoever for his job -- when & if -- is downright insulting to the many people who have struggled to climb out of the expectations of their cl***.
And, it occurs to me, why isn't William going to use his degree in Art History? There's plenty of art in his family, and his family, of course, is kindly holding the people's art in trust, so it is a relevant degree. But no, William is going to work in a financial institution before joining the army. Poor William. I do hope he had no unfulfilled expectations to be a window cleaner or a car mechanic or a counsellor when he has no choice whatsoever and will end up having to be King instead, a job for which he, like his father, has no need for training or experience or anything else -- just to be born. And, just as a matter of interest, did Charles teach his sons any of these things? Does he know himself how to saw through a piece of wood, or paper a house? Or does he just know how to hire people to do what he has no desire to learn himself. I repeat -- what a maroon! All he needs to learn for his future job is to read what others write for him.
yD
"Tee" crappolagozh...@netscape.net
I would have agreed with your earlier point about a need for more vocational training opportunities but this...
"PRINCE Charles called yesterday for more students to be taught practical subjects instead of academic ones." does speak to training, its saying Charles thinks more people should go for the practical rather than the academic. Then there's the comment about going into an academic career only to find you're not suited to it. That has a potential negative implication to it. ***uming he only meant to say people become therapists only to find they don't like it later I'd argue with that too.
You don't know you're not going to like being a therapist or accountant until you've done it for a while. Its common for people to gain degrees in fields they end up not liking so much as a full-time career. There's no way around that short of performing the job of a professional, without credentials, for a year or two and then deciding if you want to go to school to get the creds you need.
How so? While being an electrician doesn't mean you're a lesser person it certainly doesn't carry the respect given to lawyers, chemists, doctors, CEOs, etc.
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Tara
Jean Sue Libkind jean...@bookschlepper.net
The trades were very "careful" about their apprentices: no blacks, Jews or women need apply. In many cases, they only brought in relatives. Some of that has changed.
js
Jean Sue Libkind jean...@bookschlepper.net
Isn't that part of an architect's training? or is it a specialty out of art history?
js
Jean Sue Libkind jean...@bookschlepper.net
Sorry. I'm in the middle of a plumbing catastrope and it does not seem to me that those repairing my problems are underpaid. They sure as hell aren't underappreciated or undervalued when you can't take a shower and have to sleep in the living room on a cot to use the first floor powder room, the only working toilet in the house!
js
Jean Sue Libkind jean...@bookschlepper.net
Cheap shot. Charles as gardener and mucker-outer on farms in the summertime has certainly put in his fair share of manual labor. He does not do it full time, of course, but it doesn't seem to me he has ever shrugged off hard or dirty work.... and he's made sure William and Harry can clean horses' stalls, too.
js
"yaffaDina Sings Elvis" yaffadi...@aol.com
Of course.
but it doesn't seem to me he has ever If he doesn't do it for a living, it's a hobby. And I bet he gets in the professional gardeners' way more than occasionally.
and he's made sure William and Harry They ride the horses. Isn't it part of horse riding that you *do* learn to do these things. Many riders don't trust anyone but themselves to look after their horses and equipment. I understand plumbers, gardeners and stable hands have been known to read a book, go to evening cl***es to study subjects they're interested in. Stuff like that.
yD
"Hal S." h.sand...@comcast.net
If it's not 16 on center, it is at least a century old or it wasn't built to code. The 16 on center requirement is why paneling and other such stuff comes in 48-inch widths.
Hal S.
"Hal S." h.sand...@comcast.net
You must not have hired an electrician or a plumber recently.
Hal S.
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