***"Schoolhouse Locked" is three-part series examining the links between the COVID-19 crisis, education, and their outcomes for the Homelander Generation. Stay tuned for Parts Two and Three coming soon.***
---
2020. 2021. Banner years for education, no? The majority of Homelanders (or "Gen Z" in popular vernacular), born 2005 to the present, have been the recipients of public education for the last 16 years as Millennials age out into college, the workforce, and even early middle age. But there's a striking difference between the two generations that will come to highlight the chasm between them as time goes on.
Consider this quote:
"Also, my many years in Washington have given me a unique opportunity to observe how greatly the United States is handicapped because we simply do not have enough people with the educational qualifications essential to keep us progressing satisfactorily. The lack is both in general or liberal education, and in the specialized education needed by professionals and technicians. [...] Those selected we must send to special schools set up and run by our own naval reactors group. These schools do not teach reactor technology alone; they also have to teach many basic subjects which abroad have already been taught in the regular schools. "
Is the speaker talking about Homelanders? Well, yes and no.
The quote itself actually refers to the Silent Generation (born 1925 to 1942). The author, Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover, "Father of the Nuclear Navy," was a member of the Lost Generation, and in this excerpt from his book Education for All Children: What We Can Learn From England he openly criticizes the progressive pedagogy. Not an educator by trade, Admiral Rickover nonetheless found education a linchpin for the success and safety of his nuclear program in the post-World War II era. To his mind, the education received by candidates for his programs was insufficient; America needed to return to the basics.
So why were these candidates unprepared for their careers in the nuclear navy? And what does that have to do with Homelanders?
THE ARTIST ARCHETYPE
According to Strauss and Howe's The Fourth Turning and Generations, both the Homelanders and the Silent generation are part of the same generational archetype, (the four "personality" types of generations that repeat in a fixed pattern throughout history). In particular, the Homelanders and Silent belong to the ARTIST archetype, which means they are sheltered as youths, expected to follow strict rules of social order to survive a dangerous crisis era. A heavy emphasis on getting along, preparing for careers early, and learning vocational jobs instead of necessarily going to college, were hallmarks for the Silent Generation. And, it worked! They ended up wealthy and well-cared for their entire lives, even in spite of divorce and career change.
But the G.I.s, a HERO Generation who rolled through Europe in WWII, came back and went to college on the GI Bill, and built suburbs, businesses, and interstates in the post-war years, would always see the Silent Generation as inferior. On college campuses and in social circles, G.I. vets got the girls, the grades, and the glory. They set the standard for life and culture, and Silents were expected to fall in line behind this dominant, militant force of humanity-- for the greater good, of course. What else was needed now that the nation, and its prosperity, were secure? As stated in Generations, "Older generations didn't expect [the Silents] to achieve anything great, just to calibrate, to become expert at what G.I. economist Walter Heller called 'fine tuning' of the hydraulic G.I. wealth machine" (p. 287).
History repeats itself, or sometimes, as Seth Godin likes to say, "it rhymes".
Right now, our own ARTIST generation, the Homelander Generation, is being set up to encounter the same prejudice from older generations, especially on the basis of education.
GET A JOB
When the Silent Generation was in school, a new emphasis on hands-on experience and vocational education was beginning to emerge as the efforts of early progressives such as John Dewey and William Hughes Mearns began to trickle down to the burgeoning population of public school students. According to City Journal, this first took the form of career and vocational education: typing, bookkeeping, and stenography, and vocational subjects such as electricity, metals, and woodworking. After all, progressives believed that "most of the new students streaming into the high schools—especially children from immigrant families—were less intelligent than the typical student and thus unsuited for the academic curriculum" (City Journal).
Sound familiar?
As early as 2008, Charles Murray (co-author of The Bell Curve, a controversial book on IQ and socioeconomics) was advocating for increased emphasis on vocational education in his book Real Education.* Other voices joined in, emphasizing the availability and profitability of vocational jobs in the face of skyrocketing college tuition. While the parents of Generation X and Millennials were sold on the "college promise" (degree = career prosperity), the payoff was proving less and less promising every year. It may have disappeared altogether if not for the 2008 economic collapse, which shuttled more graduates into higher education, master's, and doctorate degrees as temporary safe haven from a turbulent job market. However, that safe haven was a trap in itself, resulting in tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans-- a crippling debt to Millennial graduates whose job prospects were little better than before.
The good news? The kids will be alright.
Although the Silent Generation had some of the fewest child laborers in history, its teenagers walked into surprising prosperity. Consider this LIFE Magazine article detailing the lives of teenagers in the 1950s, whom it labels "The Luckiest Generation". A quick scroll through the photo captions reveals teens with high-earning jobs in accounting, mechanics, electrical work, and animal husbandry. What's more, Strauss and Howe describe the Silent in their elder years as America's "most affluent-ever seniors."
It seems we may be able to expect the same for Homelanders, the oldest of whom can step into unprecedented high minimum wage jobs, without fear of being crowded out by Millennials. The COVID crisis may be an inauspicious start to one's working life, but not an unprosperous one. After all, when McDonalds will pay $50 just to interview you-- what's the harm in trying?
---
*I do not claim that Charles Murray is elitist or Progressive in making this analogy. However, it is notable that arguments about IQ and educational attainment seem to gain more traction in the Unraveling Era. Moreover, I think every educator, pundit, and policy-maker should contemplate this well-reasoned quote from Real Education: "American schools have never been able to teach everyone how to read, write, and do arithmetic. The myth that they could has arisen because schools a hundred years ago did not have to educate many of the least able. Recall that about half of all adults in 1900 had not reached the eighth grade" (p.64-65, my emphasis).