The War on the Young by John Sutherland

Author:John Sutherland [John Sutherland]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785903427
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2018-05-14T04:00:00+00:00

A Ladderless World

Noam Chomsky, the Yoda no one (least of all today’s young Luke Skywalkers) listens to, observes that after WWII a hugely indebted US brought in the GI Bill, admitting anyone who had served entrance to higher education, and a vast number of blue-collar benefits (tolerance of trade unionism was primary among them).

It led in the US to the ‘Eisenhower Years’. They were appropriately named for a President who, as a Commander in Chief, had won the war for the Allies. It resulted in the 1950s growth of an upwardly mobile, two car-owning, tract house-owning, washing machine-owning middle class. Think Desperate Housewives. I remember James Dean, the seventeen-year-old crazy mixed-up kid in Rebel without a Cause going to school (school!) in his personal limousine. What did he have to rebel about? The price of gasoline?

America was the envy of the world for many things, but not least for the opportunities it gave its citizens to live well, respect themselves, better themselves and – most importantly – better the prospects of their offspring. Blue collars became white collars. White collars became Brooks Brothers suits.

As popular series like Mad Men suggest, we have nostalgia for those years – even among those who never experienced them at first hand. Don Draper – working class – by talent and ruthlessness – becomes a power in the world of advertising, the industry that publicised how wonderful the American way of life was.

Which, in fact, after the austerities of war, it was. This was something that had been made to happen. Then, in the 1980s and after, it was made not to happen. It was as if a door slammed shut in the young’s face. Higher education, in the best places, now costs $35k p.a., and rising.

During the twenty-five years I spent working in America, I met, in academic life, distinguished colleagues who had ascended from humble backgrounds with the help of the GI Bill. They were now retiring, falling like autumn leaves off the tree. But retiring with a seasonal sense of a fulfilled, not a denied, life. I also met non-academics, can-do guys, who had made themselves multi-millionaires, with the aid of technical higher education supplied by the GI Bill. As Chomsky insists, it shows what could be done by a well-meaning country. It wasn’t philanthropy: it was the full use of human resources.

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