Education in Poor America


The college graduate being turned down for a job at Starbucks for “inadequate education” has become a common joke in America in recent years. Whether it actually happens doesn’t matter because it illustrates how much education someone needs for even a simple job, thinking of starting a career without a four year degree is ludicrous.

Even trying to get a summer job in high school will see college graduates getting picked first because they are more qualified. But in David K. Shiplers The Working Poor: Invisible In America he uses many different sympathetic characters, from all walks of life, to show his readers how important education is in the working world

"Soft Skills"

A college degree or high school diploma are considered necessary for getting even entry level jobs, but in The Working Poor the importance of early education and even learning from role models. This is where people learn “soft skills” that are necessary in the workplace, basic things that are so ingrained people can’t believe that others don’t know to do them, like waking up on time for work or school, or keeping up basic personal hygiene.

But in chapter five he talks to the manager of an on-the-job training center who states that some people don’t know this, because they grew up in situations where they didn’t need to, he says “I was really hard to convince. Surely not. People know to get up. They know to comb their hair. They know to wash their bodies. I’m not being nitpicky here…” (Shipler 127) He couldn’t believe that people don’t know that waking up on time and basic grooming are important when working.

This is a sympathetic character, because readers will share his disbelief, especially students in a college class, they know these things because they’ve been doing it since they were 5 years old in Kindergarten. The idea of someone not knowing to get up on time or stay clean is so foreign to most people that this chapter, and its direct quotes from managers and on-the-job trainers can be eye opening.

"Hard Skills"

More than just the “soft skills” learned from school there is also the need for a basic education in every job, from minimum wage on up. Every day people do dozens or hundreds of things they learned in elementary or middle school without thinking about it, adding up change, and writing with proper grammar. One doesn’t need a college degree or even a high school diploma to know these things, but in chapter five Bryan, the manager of a Burger King, says of one of his cashiers “Guy’s amazing, customers love him. But if he doesn’t have that keyboard to make the change for him, he’s stuck” (Shipler 139). This shows the importance of even second grade math in the workplace, and it is something many readers can relate to, math is a hard subject that many people have problems with.

It makes the unnamed cashier into a sympathetic character that can share experiences with, and it shows how that can effect someone in the workplace when the author later states “customers may love him, but he won’t be a manager. (Shipler 139). This is someone whos good, even great at his job, but he won’t advance because he can’t do math at an elementary level. It’s not explored in the book but why can’t he make change? Maybe he grew up in situation where he couldn’t go to school, maybe his school was so underfunded that he wasn’t able to learn, maybe he just has problems with math as many people do, maybe it was all three.

Conclusion

David K. Shipler uses many different sympathetic characters to show the importance of  education in the working world. His book is filled with characters, from all walks of life, in all different situations, all of which the audience can relate to in one way or another. Each one of these characters tells a different story about working poor in America, and together they make a whole story of Americans that isn’t told anywhere else.

Works Cited

Shipler, D. K. (2004). The Working Poor: Invisible in America. New York: Vintage.