Interview with my mom, Pt. 1

"Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource" - John F. Kennedy

I have had the pleasant opportunity to spend some time talking with my mother the last few days.  Our conversations range all over the place, from family to politics and education (two topics we agree on) to fantasy football and opera.  Really. 

She has had a long career as a clerk, secretary, administrative assistant, and finally executive assistant.  She mainly worked for Wayne County Community College for at least 25 years, the last dozen or so years as the college's board of education primary executive assistant.  She has seen educational leaders and trends come and go.  She made herself so indispensable that it took three people several months to replace here.  But the one thing that made my mother so irreplaceable was that she had accumulated a set of skills that allowed her to adjust to changing technology and the capricious demands of state and federal legislatures. 

When my mother first began studying at Highland Park Junior College in the mid 1950s, she learned clerking and typing skills on a manual typewriter.  Even before that, at St. Ladislaus High School, the nun played "Onward Christian Soldiers" to develop the students' rhythm as they typed.  At HPJC, she learned how to use business machines, grammar, "bookkeeping" as she says or accounting as we now call it.  Her economics' instructor had a mole on the tip of her tongue that distracted my mother's attention from lessons on supply and demand, but she still retained the info.  A "dreadfully" boring English class that had nothing but essays also filled her time.  The coordinator of the secretary's program was a "petite" woman who was always properly dressed with white gloves and interviewed the interns who would then go to work at Dodge Main in Hamtramck, MI. 

Truthfully, she said that the most important thing that she learned from HPJC was "how to cut classes...b/c we would go over to Canada and drive around... I don't know.  We were young and naive.  When I got hired by Dodge Main, I got hired for $1 / hour and that was considered good money."  (According to Tom Hill's inflation calculator, $1/ hour in 1956 is $8.12/hour in 2011 dollars).  Considering that the cost of living was lower back in the 1950s and 60s, this was truly a good wage. 

"All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem" - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, jr.


No sooner had Sputnik hit the stratosphere than Americans became obsessed with progress.  Critics pointed to a lack of progress in American schools.  So, millions was spent to improve our kids' education in science and math because we had obviously fallen behind in the space race which was just one more facet of the Cold War. 

My mother and father were married in 1959, but not before my mother was transferred to Chrysler Missile division in Sterling Heights, MI.  The town lacked the strip malls and six lane roads that crisscross it today because back then it was just farm country.  At Chrysler Missile, my mother upgraded her technology by switching to the state-of-the-art Electric Typewriter!   Security was so tight at the plant that all the waste paper baskets had locked covers w/ slits on top in which to slide paper into the baskets so that the Communist spies lurking around every corner wouldn't pilfer company secrets.  However, after the machines emptied the trash cans at the end of the day, the paper was available to any passersby who happened to look into the uncovered garbage bins out back. 

The new electric typewriter still had the steel arms that pecked out the letters.  A secretary did not have to exert as much pressure when typing through six carbons (but God forbid if she made a mistake!).  Copy machines?  Who needs copy machines when you have secretaries making a dollar an hour and loads of carbon paper?

Drawbacks with the new upgrade: expensive?  Sure.  Was it justified once you looked at increased productivity?  Not sure.  My mom doesn't remember being able to type any faster until she got a newer upgrade: the IBM Selectric. 

This machine is probably most well-known for its swiveling ball head (see below on left).  My mother felt that this new typewriter made her more productive because not only did it prevent any jamming of the letter hammers but it also had correction tape that removed a mistake (though beneath the carbons the mistake was still there).  Additionally, each of the Selectric swivel heads could be adjusted with another one to adjust the font style and size. 



She went to work with Grant Advertising (probably through her connections at Dodge Advertising) and then Difco Pharmaceuticals for five years making about $500 / month between 1960-65 ($3,700 in 1960 and $3,500 by 1965 - all in 2011 dollars).  She started out working on their catalogue that highlighted their latest medical lab equipment.  During the early 1960s, she acquired special training on the first Xerox machines (below right).  This was a huge time saver because it eliminated the need for carbon paper.  However, one of the defects of the early Xerox machines was that it "scorched" the papers it was copying. 

At Difco, she also learned about perpetual inventories, a card filing system made by IBM that helped companies maintain a record of their inventories and when to order it without an expensive computer. 

By 1965, my father was ready to study at the University of Illinois for his doctorate, and so my family pulled up stakes and relocated to Champaign, Illinois. 

With a combination of on-the-job training and skills she had acquired in previous jobs, my mom was able to adjust to any new technology that her employers could throw at her.  In essence, the machines became obsolete faster than her skills which she adapted to fit the changing work place. 

The lesson here is that if we teach to the technology, that technology will already be outdated by the time our kids graduate from high school, let alone enter the work force.  As my mom remind me, using a word processing program or an iPad never hurts but knowing how to adjust to a new word processing program or another touch screen device and how to make it work for us is what we wants our students to know. 

Sources:

Typewriter and Xerox pics: http://smithsonianeducation.org/scitech/carbons/equip.html