Monday, January 26, 2009
Homework Week 2
The articles for week two most certainly relate to my life. As a college senior ready to embark on my professional career I no longer consider myself to be in the same class as my parents. I did not work for my family’s money, my father did, and I believe that is it time to define my own place within the American class system. Certainly American classes today are not as rigid as they once were in Europe or even at the conception of our country, but nonetheless a caste system still exists within our country and we are all subjected to it. I would have to argue that as a college-educated soon-to-be graduate I would be considered a member of what Drucker calls the knowledge worker class. Seeing as though I am going to attend law school next year, I am moving my way up the social mobility ladder, gaining more knowledge, so that I can attain even greater success and greater wealth. One comment of Drucker’s that I do not agree with is that knowledge workers view their jobs as their life. While an occupation or profession certainly defines a worker to some extent, I would never say that my job would one day fully define me. I do argue that a job is more than just a means of acquiring money, however, my family and friends play an important role in defining my life and cannot be ignored.
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I agree with Dan that Drucker’s statement about a knowledge workers job is his or her life. I understand what Drucker is saying and can even see where he could get this statement, yet I feel like this quote is dated. Perhaps with the emergence of the professional middle class this was true, many of them very likely made their job into their life. Yet in the present day, the knowledge class has existed for quite some time. A large portion of the population is in the knowledge class and many grow up in it. Therefore a majority of these go to college and prepare to enter the professional working class themselves. These people who have always been in this class and know how their parents made it into the class are less likely to be utterly consumed by their job. They have been expecting to end up in the knowledge class for most of their life, and so are prepared to balance work with everything else that they are interested in. Drucker describes the professional working class as being defined by their worker, that their profession is how they describe themselves. This is no longer true, people identify more with the other activities of their lives aka being an amateur photographer or a writer. The generation graduating from college now is not near as considered with their job, but more with everything else in their lives.
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