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Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Post industrial Midwest: not sure education matters
A good friend in Chicago pointed me today to a big story in the Chicago Tribune Sunday magazine called “Can the Midwest regain its economic clout?”
The story discussed Midwestern industrial cities in general and Dayton specifically, describing how they became fat and happy as the Silicon Valley of the industrial age. People who live in Dayton and other cities were conditioned to believe there would always be union jobs with good wages that didn’t require an advanced education, the story argues.
And, it says, that attitude persists today. From the story:
A Michigan scholar, John Austin, has written about how Midwestern innovation curdled into “a culture of expectation and entitlement around the success of the mass-production economy and the prosperous middle-class life it afforded. A sense that this relative prosperity would always endure, that the region could reap good wages without education and continuing innovation, stilled the dynamic of entrepreneurialism and economic churn that built the nation.” This attitude is on full view in Austin’s Michigan. A poll there revealed that 60 percent of Michigan parents did not see higher education as crucial to their children’s future. They weren’t hostile, exactly, but didn’t think it was vital. When I told experts in Ohio and Indiana about the Michigan results, they gasped, then agreed that similar polls in their states would produce similar answers.
Education — and a changed attitude about its value — is what the Midwest needs to regain its edge, the story argues.
What do you think of this premise? Do you agree that Daytonians don’t place enough value on education and that is a major factor in the city’s decline?
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