Why We Need Mandatory National Service After High School

And why it should be paid service

Civilian Conservation Corps workers display the handmade signs they created to post along a newly constructed trail system in 1937 at the Chiricahua National Monument in Arizona. (University of Arizona Library)

One of the scraps from the national research on older Americans in my new book concerns a major elephant in the room of our educated elite (including me).

That quiet elephant no one wishes to discuss openly is cross-class socialization. Or the increasing lack of it as Americans get more and more educated. Here’s the question I used:

q33: Do you routinely socialize with anyone in the following tiers of educational attainment?

1. Less than a high school degree

2. A high school degree only

3. Some college, but no degree

4. A two-year college degree

5. A traditional four-year college degree

6. MA., MS degree

7. Professional degrees (MBA, JD, MD, Ph.D.)

Whoa.

As a proud holder of a doctorate in cultural anthropology, I'm no enemy of educated elites per se. It's my tribe. However, ever since I left India in 1999, I've harbored a secret, nervous, lip-chewing concern about my highly educated American peers - we never even interact with the rest of America. And it is the folks you don't interact with that humans are most likely to caricature, stereotype, and ultimately abuse (if left unchecked). This is incredibly corrosive when applied to how we think about local people we walk/drive by every day.

When I lived in India in the late 1990s, I routinely saw college-educated Indians attend the weddings of neighbors with a high school degree or less with whose family their own family had had some transactional relationship across the generations. And yes, my educated Indian peers didn't invite them into their homes to hang out or eat, but they did talk with them at coffee stalls, say 'hi' in the streets, and attend their weddings. There was civil to loving engagement across lines of class.¹

As a 52-year-old, I've bumped into 'high school only' adults in just two settings:

1. when an avid mt. biker in the Pacific Northwest from 2003-2005 (and while single). Some lifestyle activities easily blur class boundaries in modern America (though it can make the after-party at the pub awkward)

2. My professional advisory business (2017-present). In other words, when I can make some money from them, I'll dive ‘down’ the class ladder to hang w/less educated folk. Hmmm… that's suspicious all on its own.

And, in my 20s, I would have given you the same justifications my peers would give you today: I don't meet them and have nothing in common with them. But is the latter true? Really? Are we so divided culturally?

Postgrad-educated people have more in common with high school dropouts than wearing clothes in public and chatting about the weather. Yet, they almost never get to experience this commonality at all. Instead, we focus on superficial differences related to material possessions, occupation positioning in an elite caste hierarchy of surgeons to brand managers, or how many astute literary analogies we can drop in ordinary conversation.

In the past twenty years, I’ve traveled and researched up and down the ladder of class all over America, across lines of race and immigration status as well. Americans are united in several things deep under the surface of our materialistic differences and occupational dress.

WE, the people of the United States of America:

1. have a very high need for autonomy in major life decisions

2. want to earn our success and be recognized for this in front of our peers

3. want to work, but not excessively (postgrad elites work hard as a status display or because it makes them a lot of money)

4. are very competitive yet often deny it

5. believe “lifestyle” should be a direct extension of personal preferences, not tradition

6. dislike angry confrontation in public (i.e., we’re mostly passive-aggressive)

7. abhor any and all status-based condescension (unless we’re administering it!)

8. love snack food…(and we snack a lot)

9. want to find a ‘life partner’ - not just a convenient marriage

10. prefer friends over family (see point #1)

11. are absolutely obsessed with recorded music and musical celebrities

12. love film (esp. rom-coms and car-chase thrillers)

13. refuse to sacrifice our lifestyle substantially so that others can be lifted up (see point #2)

I do not know of any other society on Earth where this cultural glue exists across class (or caste) lines. Yet, I have seen a lot of these ‘traits’ exported into the educated, Westernized elite of major Asian cities, except number 10…

The National Integration Problem Posed by Elite Education

To recap our key social fact under discussion: Most older people with a professional degree never hang out with the least educated around them (family included).

The problem this poses is existential for the future of American democracy.

Post-grad degree holders aged 45-76 currently hold most of the leadership positions in government and corporate America. These folks run the economy and democracy. If postgrad elites only hang out with themselves, how can they determine social policy or employee benefits with any semblance of deep empathy? I don't believe that Census data sliced by income or well-intentioned books build empathy as effectively as face-to-face interaction and play (not that kind, you Dan Savage deviant).

The current situation leads to something my Substack colleague rightly pointed out recently in his excellent summary of leading social class theorists.

Luxury Beliefs are Status Symbols

Defunding the police is one of those luxury beliefs that fellow Substack author Rob Henderson wisely points to as problematic. The media tends to portray the 'defund the police' opinion as a far-left belief, but the reality, in my opinion, is that it is more about postgrad educational attainment (which leads to uninformed liberal thinking).

And, yes, postgrad education is far more correlated with high incomes that permit living in very safe zip codes among most Americans (not just older ones in my study). In fact, as of last year, those with professional degrees or doctorates earn roughly 43% more in median weekly income than mere college graduates.² Put two such adults together through the miracle of assortative mating, and you have the top 1-2%.

Yet, defunding the police is only one of many 'out-of-touch' elite beliefs of postgrad Americans. Demonizing the less educated for their relative ‘book ignorance’ is perhaps the worst status sin among myself and my peers. Maybe if we worked harder to improve high school education in America, we wouldn't worry so much about the basic knowledge canon of those without a college degree. Just a wild and crazy idea (which will require a lot more taxation locally).

My peers are fairly obnoxious, I admit. And it was not always like this, partly because postgrad educated people were once so rare that they had no choice but to socialize well beyond their diploma peerage. Their neighborhood used to be the place where they had to ‘get over themselves’ every Saturday morning.

I’m still elitist enough, though, to believe that we do want highly educated people in charge of our major civic institutions. But…and this is a big but, we can not afford as a country to have those controlling our major institutions be so ignorant of the America they dwell within. It’s unacceptable and feeds the worst extremist thinking (and action) you can imagine among non-elites.

The Solution is Mandatory Paid National Service

There is nothing so important to an 18-year-old that cannot wait one year. LDS church members will complain, but we can get them on board. What America needs is a national ritual that forces elite kids to live and work with the rest of America.

What we need as a democratic nation is a mandatory post-high school year of paid national service.

Yes, I wrote mandatory.

But I wouldn't dare suggest military service like the State of Israel.

I'm thinking more like Habitat for Humanity or the Civilian Conservation Corps—or the military, if someone prefers that.

If we can assume that young people aged 18 are still highly impressionable folks whose class trajectories have not yet wholly separated them, then follow my thinking.

This is the perfect time of life to a) delay college and b) ensure that future elites have solid, positive memories of interacting with folks who have no intention of going to college at all. There are many of the latter. They are just invisible to those who read blogs like this.

And, hopefully, by stripping away all the visible status markers of elite homes, the rest of America will also see these ‘punks’ as normies not overly different from them (see list above).

We know from social theory that emotionally intense shared activities and rituals are the essence of group bonding and identity formation. We must ritually induct Americans into civic adulthood to remain a cohesive, democratic nation.

This is essentially a national rite of passage, and as long as we pay these kids a nominal (yet low) salary, they will see that the country’s taxpaying adults want their service badly enough. It will unite the elders and youth in a desperately needed manner.

I'd' go further with class-based incentives.

1. Those not on the college track should be paid the regular stipend.

2. To really deepen their bonding, college-bound participants should be incentivized to complete two years of national service before starting college. Perhaps by offering a couple of years of tuition tax rebates deferred for up to ten years (in case they do five years of service!). This is just one idea.

Whatever we do, we have to get postgrad elites interacting as peers with folks on a very different, equally important, social trajectory. Without this foundational rite of passage as a nation, I doubt the social policy will ever get back on track at the local, county, state, and federal levels.

If you’re relatively new to the publication, thanks for joining but don’t forget to check out my new book - Our Worst Strength: American Individualism and its Hidden Discontents. Available on Amazon.

“An excellent read.” “A delightful read.” “Not as dry as I was expecting.”

It’s funny, story-driven, and written at the 10th grade level. You can’t lose!

---

POPULAR RECENT POSTS

How Pets Edged Out Our Friends

Modern Individualism is Networked and Oversold

The American Debate Over "playing the victim" Continues to Miss the Point

1. I imagine this has broken down quite a bit in the last twenty-five years in the bigger cities, which also feature gated communities as America's elite neighborhoods do.

2. https://www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-education.htm.