Originally Posted by mulp

Well, we have 27 years since the election of Reagan and his conservative philosophy, the attitude best exemplified by McCain: "those jobs are gone forever" when talking about manufacturing jobs, with the attitude that in the future the US will do the jobs that require "thinking" while the rest of the world will do all the hard work jobs.

Basically a political culture that denigrates those who labor manually in manufacturing or in the trades, and assumes that everyone who matters in society will be a college graduate.

Unions who were advocates for "labor", and who sponsored and promoted training programs for their members, were emasculated. Trade schools have been cut back, and the trades removed from high schools in lots of cases. But of course, that is consistent with the message that such jobs aren't to be considered respectable.

So, with college the only path to any sort of life in the US, everyone needs to qualify for college to have a life in these United States. Thus, passing from grade 12 to grade 13 must take place with the same reliability as passing from grade 1 to grade 2.