The next time you get ready to bring another suitcase full of cash or a digital fund transfer to your kid’s elementary or high school teachers or to professors at the nearest university so they can give you investment advice, think about this.
In a June 27, 2024 “Exclusive” entitled “Jamie Dimon says America's school-to-job pipeline is broken,” Axios reported that “America's schools, businesses and cities are failing to help younger workers and underrepresented communities prepare for and land well-paid jobs,” according to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.1
According to Dimon, the school system is actually failing corporate America: “Businesses have to hire a lot of people and they have to train them, so when the school system doesn't do it, it makes this harder for companies.” Important relevant information:
Among their varied roles it’s not the job of schools to make it easier for companies.
There is no “school system”: there are thousands of school systems throughout the nation.
The George W. Bush administration’s brilliantly named and miserably conceived and executed “No Child Left Behind” program attempted to measure quality and hold these thousands of systems to a single standard of education, and instead chased talented, veteran teachers (professional educators who understood their profession and the needs of children) into early retirement, and wound up measuring how well teachers could prepare students to take standardized tests, rather than measuring how well teachers could prepare students on their way to becoming fully human beings—whether or not they were interested in working for those businesses who (sigh) had to hire and train them.
The Axios piece noted that Dimon was speaking in his role as founder of the “New York Jobs CEO Council, a nonprofit that he started in early 2020,” that “helps schools, colleges and companies create curriculum and training programs to place workers into high-paying jobs — with a focus on New Yorkers from low-income communities and the City University of New York (CUNY).” According to council executive director Kiersten Barnet, the goal is to “build a system where every New Yorker has a pathway to a family-sustaining job.”2
So, a coalition of multi-billion and trillion-dollar companies wants to help folks from “low income communities” find pathways to jobs that pay them enough to sustain a family. Okay, sounds reasonable. As evidence of the council’s success, Axios reported that “In 2023, the council companies hired a total of 10,388 low-income New Yorkers into jobs paying more than $69,000.” So far, so good? Who would be against that? Sure, that $69k is a bit meager contrasted with Dimon’s 2023 pay package of $36 million (521.7 x $69k), but, hey, folks have to start somewhere.
More to the point, according to the National Education Association (NEA) the average teacher salary in the United States in 2022-2023 was $69,544. The lowest averages by state were West Virginia, ranked 51st3 at $52,879, Florida, ranked 50th at $53,098, and South Dakota, ranked 49th at $53,153. The three highest averages were California, ranked 1st at $95,160, New York, ranked 2nd at $92,696, and Massachusetts, ranked 3rd at ($92,307). Again, these are averages. Salaries vary by local school district, by degree held, and by number of years teaching.4
Some of the folks who should be preparing kids to join Jamie Dimon’s workforce in order to make between $69k and $36 million begin their teaching careers making between $30k and $40k per year. In some districts, with a graduate degree and 20+ years teaching, they can approach and exceed six figures. Perhaps it would make sense if first-year teachers—who, according to Dimon, are among those responsible for training students for these $69k jobs (so it’s not too hard for companies to train them)—made as much as the students they’re “training.”
Mr. Dimon, whom I don’t know, and who is undoubtedly brilliant and good at what he does, seems to think that the role of education is to prepare young human beings to fit themselves into jobs that have been created by the political-economic machine of modernity that is at once dying and killing the planet at the same time.5
Perhaps there are other views of the role of education.
What might happen if not everyone agreed it’s the school systems’ jobs to prepare kids to spend their lives working for corporations, many of which need taxpayer bailouts (and “bolsters”) in order to continue contributing to the destruction, directly or indirectly, of the planet.6
What if it’s not the school systems’ job to provide business with worker bees?
What if (gulp) school systems were to provide the time, space, processes, and freedom to explore what it means to live a good life aligned with actual value, as opposed to exchange or abstract value, to discover one’s unique ecological niche, and to develop delivery systems for bringing one’s gifts to the community?7 What might happen if education, within and outside school systems, encouraged and guided children to explore their full humanity and their inherent value beyond a job title and a paycheck?
What if the last thing “low income communities” need is to be patronized by the very people who build and perpetuate systems that create low income communities, and to receive financial incentive to become entry-level workers in those systems? What if low- middle- and high-income communities would all benefit from the dismantling of systems that lead to low- middle- and high-income communities—not in the sense of ensuring that everyone’s income was exactly the same to the penny (remember pennies?), but such that no one was making 520 times more than their lowest-paid employee?
In a short-term, relative way, I’m guessing that the 10,388 low-income New Yorkers who got jobs paying more than $69,000 appreciate the program—I sure would. In a longer-term, bigger-picture way, feeding the beast that created the income and wealth disparities by inviting its victims to join it, is to ignore a larger problem—kicking the can down the road.
We need people with worldviews and states of mind that don’t wait until they have billions or hundreds of millions of dollars in income and/or net worth in order to help others.
An approach to education that makes things easier for business is not what we need. We need an approach to education that provides the best chance for each human being to live a life well lived—to recognize and live into her unique place in the world, bring his gifts to the community, and understand that their worth is not determined by money, social visibility, or exceptionalism, but “simply” by who they are.
Recommendation: Tune into the conversation between Zak Stein and Nate Hagens, “Values, Education, AI, and the Metacrisis,” The Great Simplification Podcast, Nate Hagens, May 8, 2024, https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/122-zak-stein
Something to Consider: What is the role of education? Include, but think beyond, formal schooling. Spend some time with this. There will be no test.
Hope King, “Jamie Dimon says America's school-to-job pipeline is broken,” Axios, June 27, 2024, https://www.axios.com/2024/06/27/jamie-dimon-workers-new-york-ceo-jobs-council?
For a list of the billion- and trillion-dollar companies that are members of the New York Jobs CEO Council, click here: https://nyjobsceocouncil.org/who-we-are/
Washington, D.C. is counted; thus 51, rather than 50 state districts.
To find specific first-year (or any year) teacher salaries, search by state, county, and or town.
For more on the cascading series of crises (aka metacrisis) that face the planet, see last week’s Healing America’s Narratives post: https://reggiemarra.substack.com/p/striving-to-win-the-dying-game
As an example, JPMorgan Chase accepted $25 billion from us (taxpayers) in 2008-2009. To Mr. Dimon’s credit, his bank was one that repaid the bailout in full. Selective socialism and welfare have their places in capitalist society when they serve the capitalists.
For one closer look at “actual” and “abstract” value (and much, much more), tune into the conversation between Zak Stein and Nate Hagens, “Values, Education, AI, and the Metacrisis,” The Great Simplification Podcast, Nate Hagens, May 8, 2024, https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/122-zak-stein
For more on “unique ecological niche” see Bill Plotkin’s The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries, (New World Library, 2021), 6-8, 15-20. See also: https://www.animas.org/glossary-to-language-of-soul-canyon/#ecological%20niche