Would Rick Santorum call Rosie the Riveter a snob?

Rick Santorum’s recent criticism of President Obama’s call to make it possible for all Americans to advance their education or training as elitist snobbery makes me wonder what the GOP candidate would say to Nancy Deanda.

Before taking her married name, Nancy Miramontes was born in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska in 1925 to immigrant parents from Mexico. She recently recounted her story to me as a part of the Regional Oral History Office’s World War II / American Homefront Oral History Project—a collaboration with the National Park Service. Miramontes’ family worked in agriculture in Nebraska until the Great Depression became so severe that they picked up started for California in search of work. At the onset of World War II, Nancy and her sister – like the many young women of their generation who came to be known collectively as Rosie the Riveters—sought employment in the defense industry.

Norman Rockwell image of Rosie the Riveter

The Miramontes girls went to work full time before finishing high school, but the war provided them with a life-changing opportunity: a two week long program in Oakland that taught young women to be welders. At first, Nancy’s father was opposed to his girls finding work at the rough and tumble shipyards. He considered it too dangerous, and suggested that they continue with other women at the nearby cannery, which was safer but paid much less. Nancy distinctly remembered her father saying to her, “Well, they’re going to start hiring women now because they took all the boys to the war.” Miramontes even recalled her response. She said to her father, “Well, I want to go to work there. I don’t want to work in the cannery no more. It was all ladies, young and old. I wanted a better job.”

Miramontes found tremendous joy in her new profession. Her hard work and skill in welding resulted in a tangible contribution to the war effort. She was not alone in her experience, as countless other World War II era women were able to gain training and enter the workforce thanks to government programs. Rather than making them feel dependent, elitist, or out of touch, the support that women were given in the war—and the skills they obtained—made them want to achieve even more. Miramontes found herself eager to see other women, as well as her own children, “stay in school.”

Louise McClain was also a young girl when the Great Depression hit, and World War II started just as she was finishing high school in Colorado. After graduation, she enrolled at University of Denver to study mathematics, her “easiest subject,” but news of a job training program with Curtiss-Wright Aircraft caused her to transfer to the University of Minnesota.

For Louise and the other young women who came to be called the Curtiss-Wright cadets, the experience was a revelation. Not only did the program cover “all our tuition, our board and room,” the professors, many of whom were at first shocked by the influx of female students, came to embrace the young women as equals. McClain recalls: “Some of them were almost a little afraid of us. They hadn’t had many women at all.” Despite their initial reservation, she explains of the faculty, “Most of them were just wonderful to us.”

Following her training, McClain found work in the engineering department at Curtiss-Wright in Columbus, Ohio, where the Helldiver bomber was produced until the end of the war. With the help of an engineer, McClain’s final task at the plant was to help redesign the hydraulic systems on the aircraft. The war ended, and McClain returned to Denver to finish college before finding work at an engineering firm.

As the Second World War ended, corporations and the federal government jointly encouraged women to return to traditional roles after the war, vacating jobs to make way for the returning GIs. Despite the economic and social opportunities presented to women during the conflict, most women were simply for the war to end. But for many women, particularly those who were trained as nurses, welders, drafters, and engineers—circumstances would never be the same. They had not only been given an economic lifeline during the war, they had been offered unique opportunities for personal advancement.  Many women benefited from wartime training programs that advanced their education—in both academic and technical settings—allowing them to become  more competitive in the modern job market. Numerous women now felt empowered to join the workforce, and indeed, some women did continue to work in related fields following the end of the war, permanently benefiting from the opportunities that were given to them.

As veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan war return home to a brutal job market, it is vital that we consider how best to put them and other young people to work. Lessons from the past might point a way forward. In times of great emergency, our country has benefited most when it has reinvested in education. We must double down. Abraham Lincoln’s Morrill Land Grant Act emerged out of the crucible of the Civil War. The act has paid dividends for the millions of students who enrolled in public universities across the country since that time. During World War II we further invested in young people by giving students scholarships and funding the educational mechanisms that make progress possible.

These propositions are anathema to Santorum and other conservatives who want to slash government support for higher education. But our success as a country depends on supporting higher education and job training programs. The success of the education programs that emerged during World War II should inspire us to construct bold new initiatives that enable young people to advance their training. Casual dismissal of these programs as snobbery ignores crucial chapters in our nation’s history—and has alarming implications for its future.