Indeed, the aim of these schools was to prepare a slice of society for blue-collar life.
But as antsy TV executives gear up to present this year's new shows at the annual network upfronts, and we all prepare, as a society, to mercilessly mock whatever turns out to be this year's answer to the Geico cavemen sitcom, we shouldn't feel as if the perfect (or near-perfect) season can never happen.
Kwan explores the generational clash between tradition and Western-style consumerism in a group of interconnected old-money families as they prepare for a society wedding in Singapore.
In a startling recent poll, he was judged "the best opposition to Nicolas Sarkozy", beating, in order, all the old guard: Mr Delanoë, Ms Royal and Mr Hollande.Appealing to anti-market hostility in France, the new darling of media talk-shows is launching a "New Anti-Capitalist Party", to "prepare a radical revolutionary transformation of society" and "the end of capitalism".
"We're better prepared as a society, but not necessarily as a government," said Mr. Hamre, a deputy secretary of defense in the Clinton administration.
And Di Greaves, as co-secretary for the Transition Group, sibling to the repair café, places the philosophy in the wider context; the Welsh towns of Rhayader, Presteigne, Montgomery and Newtown are preparing for a society post-carbon and fossil fuel.
And it's not just a question of responding to the needs of people with mental health problems, though this is of course important, but of being prepared, as a society, to consider what we might do to reduce people's risk of developing them in the first place.
The question is - are we prepared for a society based on free informational resources where any knowledge is reachable, and is it considerable to view it as a positive factor of human evolution?
We easily say "Sink or Swim," but are we truly prepared, as a society, to stand by while people drown?
In their paper titled "The Emoji Factor: Humanizing the Emerging Law of Digital Speech," Dr Elizabeth Kirley and Associate Professor Marilyn McMahon ask if we are "prepared as a society to expand constitutional protections to the casual, unmediated 'low value' speech of emoji".
