Everywhere I have gone in the last few days the subject of education has come up, along with the ever present, “What in the hell are our politician’s thinking about?” I can’t even begin to relay how many times the latter topic has become THE topic of conversation within the last year. Education is an idea that everyone agrees with but most are willing to “leave to the experts,” which is the attitude that has made “ignorant and self-serving” politicians the number one topic of conversation among middle class Americans.
In truth, education should be the number one topic of conversation for everyone because the present state of the nation is directly tied to the presently insane conception of education in the US. In the last 50 years the focus of a public education, indeed, any US based education, has shifted from the Liberal Arts to that of professional preparation. A great many forces are responsible for this shift but the greatest force, in my opinion, has been the commodification of specialized information. With the shift away from an agrarian economy and the present shift of industrialization from a national economic base to a global economic base, the ability of any individual to gain access to the means of survival depends upon their access to highly specialized information. A citizen can no longer prowl the forests for meat to get the family through the winter or scratch the surface of the earth to grow a crop of grain, beans, or vegetables. A citizen can no longer travel to an industrial center a few hundred miles away and gain employment on the line of a factory that requires little more than the ability to read at a sixth grade level. The intellectual goals of public elementary and secondary education in the US that were developed in the late nineteenth century are no longer sufficient for supplying the intellectual skills that a critical democracy needs to survive or that employers consider sufficient for consideration of employment. In addition, the situation at the primary and secondary levels of education is made worse by the belief that ALL students should be prepared for careers or jobs that no longer exist or exist for a very few highly trained individuals.
In the past, specialized information was reserved for those workers new to the marketplace who committed to a lengthy apprenticeship program. Generally speaking, those who completed the apprenticeship were well-versed in the complexities of the trade or business they apprenticed. Even the most untalented could at least gain access to the knowledge necessary to effectively function as low level laborers. However, apprenticeship programs are expensive to initiate and maintain. Organized business was more than happy to surrender that expense to professional and technical schools. Today, public elementary and secondary schools prepare students for surviving within an economy that no longer exists. The focus, allegedly, is academic, with the implicit understanding that public school students must continue on to college in order to secure the professional knowledge required to be considered employable by US businesses.
Unfortunately, three major difficulties accompany this shift from intellectually preparing students to become responsible students in a critical democracy to preparing students to become employable commodities:
1. Not all students are intellectually capable of the higher thinking skills thought necessary to survive in a “post-industrial” society
In truth, education should be the number one topic of conversation for everyone because the present state of the nation is directly tied to the presently insane conception of education in the US. In the last 50 years the focus of a public education, indeed, any US based education, has shifted from the Liberal Arts to that of professional preparation. A great many forces are responsible for this shift but the greatest force, in my opinion, has been the commodification of specialized information. With the shift away from an agrarian economy and the present shift of industrialization from a national economic base to a global economic base, the ability of any individual to gain access to the means of survival depends upon their access to highly specialized information. A citizen can no longer prowl the forests for meat to get the family through the winter or scratch the surface of the earth to grow a crop of grain, beans, or vegetables. A citizen can no longer travel to an industrial center a few hundred miles away and gain employment on the line of a factory that requires little more than the ability to read at a sixth grade level. The intellectual goals of public elementary and secondary education in the US that were developed in the late nineteenth century are no longer sufficient for supplying the intellectual skills that a critical democracy needs to survive or that employers consider sufficient for consideration of employment. In addition, the situation at the primary and secondary levels of education is made worse by the belief that ALL students should be prepared for careers or jobs that no longer exist or exist for a very few highly trained individuals.
In the past, specialized information was reserved for those workers new to the marketplace who committed to a lengthy apprenticeship program. Generally speaking, those who completed the apprenticeship were well-versed in the complexities of the trade or business they apprenticed. Even the most untalented could at least gain access to the knowledge necessary to effectively function as low level laborers. However, apprenticeship programs are expensive to initiate and maintain. Organized business was more than happy to surrender that expense to professional and technical schools. Today, public elementary and secondary schools prepare students for surviving within an economy that no longer exists. The focus, allegedly, is academic, with the implicit understanding that public school students must continue on to college in order to secure the professional knowledge required to be considered employable by US businesses.
Unfortunately, three major difficulties accompany this shift from intellectually preparing students to become responsible students in a critical democracy to preparing students to become employable commodities:
1. Not all students are intellectually capable of the higher thinking skills thought necessary to survive in a “post-industrial” society
2. Professional education neglects the critical thinking skills necessary for a truly democratic society and government
3. Most students who do manage to attend college are saddled with a huge student loan debt that, in truth, belongs to the society that will ultimately benefit from their labor. This debt clearly shifts the social responsibility of any given individual away from the society and its members that the student eventually will work within to an extremely localized social sphere of acquaintances and family that functions socially as a tribe.
As a society, we already see the repercussions of this shift in educational objectives. As more and more of our youth are relegated to low skill employment futures, even with college degrees, the very fabric of a coherent, democratic society is beginning to shred. Is the trend reversible? Of course, but like all difficulties any society faces the solution depends upon a radical shift away from strategies designed to benefit only a privileged few.
