Famous and (Infamous) Workplace and Community Training

What will organizational leaders in the year 2085 think of today’s Hooters™ training manual which includes such directives as “look wholesome, yet sexy … and, white bras only with make-up to be worn at all times”? This introductory chapter challenges the reader to view workplace and community training from an axiological as well as a social justice lens. Specifically, while the act of training itself—teaching or developing oneself or others in knowledge, skills, or attitudes (KSAs) needed to improve one’s capability—may be value neutral, training programs have historically been the means to sustain stereotypes, racism, and sexism, yet they also have been a party to progressive societal efforts and cultural movements. An overarching premise presented is that organizational and community leaders must be vigilant in ensuring that not only are training outcomes ethical, but so too are the interventions.

In the introductory chapter of this book, the construct of training is defined and the concept of training is explored in more depth, including a brief chronology. While the term “training” is utilized throughout the book, this chapter underscores that a unified definition for “training” remains elusive—that is, meanings tend to vary depending upon the given goals and objectives, and, as it relates to this book, the nature of the training will be a function of the context and purpose of the training itself. Some in the field contend that—semantics aside—training means “training and development.” Others in the field not only refuse to define training, but also claim that it defies definition entirely. Thus, in the spirit of a social science, when it comes to training people, training’s definition does vary depending on who you ask.

Light heavyweight boxing champion Louis “Battling Siki” Fall from Senegal, Africa, was once one of the four or five most recognizable black men in the world. Therefore, it was not surprising when Battling Siki’s likeness was used in Gordon J. A. Hargrave’s popular 1920s sales training manual, Secrets of Selling. However, Hargrave used Louis Fall’s picture not to lionize the boxing legend but rather to train would-be salesmen on the differences between the emotional and the logical buyer. In this essay, the folk science of physiognomy—the notion that a person’s outer appearance, especially the face, could provide insight into his or her true character or personality—is explored and discussed in the context of how it shaped the training given to salesmen in the early twentieth century.

This essay explores training surrounding the forced foreign labor during World War II including the Jewish councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi occupation. Jews, Russians, and Roma were involved in mandatory training courses to enhance the labor skills. Such training courses were run so that workers could qualify for labor certificates in German industry. Many Jews (erroneously) believed that if they could demonstrate their usefulness to German industry, this would reduce their chances of being exterminated.

It is widely held that the cornerstone of the Beatles’ success was the synergy between John Lennon and Paul McCartney; many music critics and scholars agree that their dyad was the most successful and influential that popular music had seen. Indeed, much has been written regarding the Lennon–McCartney partnership and the ostensive reasons for its break-up. By 1969, the individual conditions of Lennon and McCartney were different. McCartney, on the one hand, was flourishing from his self-education as a musician, songwriter, and producer and by this time had become the de facto group leader, while Lennon was fundamentally withdrawn and apathetic regarding his partnership with McCartney, as well as the Beatles as a band. This essay discusses how, beyond “sex, drugs, and rock and roll,” Lennon’s and McCartney’s self-training and self-directed learning styles, particularly, may have impacted the dyad and affected the longevity of the group, in general.

This essay explores the dubious parenting and child-rearing advice and education given to parents in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Books, manuals, magazines, pamphlets, and other ephemera are reviewed and discussed. Additionally, scientific management and behaviorism are discussed as a context for the questionable parenting and child-rearing practices given to parents during this time period.

Mental hygiene films, also known as social guidance or social engineering films, were training films that were specifically used to shape the social behavior of their audiences. This essay explores the social guidance film industry and how these training films were part of instruction in elementary and high school classrooms in the United States from the late 1940s to the early 1970s (with their heyday in the 1950s and 1960s). Social guidance films covered topics including social etiquette and dating, personal hygiene, drug use, and driver safety. Discussed in this chapter, too, are the motivations for government civil defense training considered by experts today as feckless or, at best, profoundly lacking. The idea that the government provided such training to minimize civilian panic is explored, as well.

This final chapter concludes with the overarching critical reflections that fall under the ethical perspective of training and development such as who gets access to training and development, an employer’s duty to train and develop its employees, as well as such ruminations as: