Businesses are frustrated with the quality of public education
I hope this post finds you well.
History of Education:
I want you to imagine. A time log ago, when your ancestors were hunter gatherers. Before they adopted agriculture. Say, more than 10,000 years ago. … A time when the definition of family was different. Today a family is husband, wife and children. I believe back then the family was the community. I believe male, female coupled together, but parenting was primarily done by the community. The best hunter would be in charge of teaching the children. The best gatherer instructed the children how to gather mushrooms, ensuring no poisonous mushrooms are consumed. I don’t think there were formal education classes but training for a skill by the best in the community. This way each child gets the best training for all the skills necessary for the community to survive. Community was more important, for the community provided for everyone. Also, training was augmented with plenty of storytelling and humor.
I believe children learned from their elders by watching and emulating, and I’m sure the elders looked on humorously as the kids stumbled their way to learning new skills. Although life was probably very difficult, I believe, there was no concept of work like we have today, just community participation and play time.
With the shift to agriculture, life changed. Farming is very difficult, requiring lots of people spending many hours laboring. So, family members participated including young children. With farming requiring hard work, a sense of ownership arose and the desire for the owner to pass the farm on to their offspring. Unfortunately, people who did not own land became dependent on the farm owners for work and food. I think this ultimately gave way to landowners becoming lords or kings while the non-farm owner becoming pheasants. This might have created a class system. Maybe this is the reason for the institution of slavery. The larger the farm the more workers needed.
Education in America:
In 1690 children in Massachusetts were taught to read thru nursery rhymes. Mainly, so they could read the bible. To the early American’s, being able to read the bible was of utmost importance. It turns out this was one of the reasons, they used, to get children out of the workforce.
Early in the rise of industry, business owners used children for cheap and unskilled labor. Only upper-class children received an education, from private schools. But by the end of the 19th century, businesses had realized that an educated layborer created a better worker. Thus, they discourage child labor in favor of childhood education. Although the businesses did not offer to pay for the education, the community paid. It was the combination of a desire to get the children literate, to read the bible and business owners realizing an educated citizen was better for the workforce.
Slowly, the school curriculum expanded with new subjects, requiring more time spent in class, resulting in the child’s life being restructure around education, including homework and a grading system.
Up until 1960, educating children was done using repetition and memorization. The curriculum emphasized Latin, English and Math. During the 1960’s education was reformed and modified by federal government along with funds appropriated to schools. Education policy directed African American equal rights issues be incorporated into education, and federal government refused to offer funds to private schools and parochial schools. Preserving the separation of church and state. Teachers were encouraged to develop their students minds intellectual curiosity. This new addition to the education was to improve course retention, instead of using rote and memorization which worked on only 40% of the students. It was though that stimulating the students mind intellectually would improve student retention. Also, unfortunately, new courses were added to the curriculum including Sociology, Social Sciences, Theater and Arts, and foreign languages.
Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, the reforms did not improve graduate’s scholastic abilities. In fact, the opposite happened, resulting in what some education experts call the dumbing down of America. This is bad, for a democracy to work, it requires a very educated populace. Our republic requires educated people with reasoning powers to make the difficult decisions faced today.
Personally, I think there are too many required subjects in the curriculum. It’s not Latin, English and math anymore. Along with too many subjects required for graduating high school, there are computer software programs to learn, social media, Microsoft Excel, Word, Power Point, it’s endless. To make it even more complicated, there are too many distractions at school, iPhone, social media, alert and text messaging. The social phenomenon of the cancel culture doesn’t help either.
To reduce distractions, France prohibited the students from using smart phones in school. What a great idea. I don’t know why we didn’t do it here first. There are minimalist phones with no internet access, allowing the parents and children to contact each other in case of an emergency.
I question the use of computers in school. There are expensive and they consume immense amounts of time just to learn how to work with the operating system, and their applications. I think they are less productive than we are told. Computers, social media, mobile phones, and internet were originally designed to help you communicate with each other, make life easier and more productive. They’re to supplement our lives, with the hope of improving it.
It’s important to understand social media’s business plan. They make their money from advertising. Their goal is to keep you on the site for as long as they can, so they can present you with consumer adds. It’s all about getting money thru consumer adds. So, social medias apps are designed to interrupt you so you will stay connected on their app.
I believe these computer devices are in school because the businesses want them there. Just imagine, thru social media you can present adds to students in school classrooms. You could never do that before. This is a great business opportunity. The business model for social media is to get money from companies that want adds to be presented to the user. Gee, maybe I ought to place an add before the next paragraph. I could make some extra money.
Why do we have education today?:
If you ask people, businesses or governments, what the purpose of education is you will get a different answer. Each answer will give you the impression they want to help children achieve their highest potential, be creative, moral, productive and capable of maintaining a democratic society.
I believe the real purpose of education is so the businesses can choose between candidates when the need for new employees arises. Businesses must be competitive. They do this by hiring the most capable. Unfortunately, the desire for profits is greater. We are in the Greed is good era. Businesses today would rather use robots to replace employees in the workforce. Employees are a great burden for companies. Providing health care is expensive, Insurance thru the roof, and education is expensive, dealing with unions is difficult and can be expensive. If a business owner could do away with people all together and fully automate the company, they would.
Let’s face it, we live in a meritocracy. Education is designed to separate students into grade levels. After graduation the universities and businesses can filter out the less capable students. There is immense pressure to get good grades, due to the limited high paying job openings. This may be the reason colleges are giving out more A’s, called grade inflation, than ever in the past.
Where are we headed?
There is a perfect storm approaching and it is going to be disaster for Americans. Our new education system that was reformed in the 1960’s is failing us. Frustrated, businesses complain that there are not enough qualified candidates. Businesses are starting to take matters into their own hands. They are going to change the present system to a gigged economy.
In a gigged economy, citizens are responsible for their own education and must keep up with the technology, it’s too expensive for businesses, and besides they can get the citizens and government to pay for it, via lobbying. Permanent fulltime employment will diminish, due to expensive healthcare cost. It’s already happened to the low wage workers. Citizens are placed into temporary positions, even though they would rather be full time, so the business do not have to pay additional healthcare cost. Eventually all employees will be treated as temporary. Being called a consultant just means the company does not have to give you healthcare benefits. This will make the businesses, leaner and more efficient, giving the upper echelon employees and the owners more money of course.
In order to satisfy the businesses, we must change the education system. I say we reduce the required courses, there are too many. I would even go as far having only Latin, English, Math and history/Government. This way we can zero in on producing graduates that at least know how to communicate with each other. It would be nice to have articulate conversations with each other for once. I would also reduce all possible distractions that the student might have. Just get rid of smart phones, altogether.
Maybe we could take a lesson from the military. They don’t educate their new recruits, they train them. Training ensures that each recruit has comprehended the subject and is capable of applying it, essentially graduated with an A. Education is a process of grouping students into a grade slot and the grade indicate how much of the subject you comprehend. Training ensures you fully comprehend and are able to apply in the real world. I think training works because it includes practice time with an instructor. Practice makes perfect, as the saying goes.
Imagine you are in the military, and you just finished your education. Now it’s time to apply your education, your country needs you. You are on the front lines, tasked with defending your position. You of course are an A student. Unfortunately, on your left is a soldier who got a D and on your right is a soldier who got a C. Good Luck. Now you see why they train and don’t educate.
I just think when students leave high school they should be both educated and trained, with plenty of practice, ready for work, society and democracy. A democracy is the most difficult form of government to uphold, it requires a very educated and trained populace.
Notes:
There is an article in Psychology Today named “A brief History of Education” written by peter Gray PhD. It’s a 20 – 30 min read. In his article he presents a different view of how education should be done. There is also a History of Education section on Wikipedia, that is worth a read. It’s quite extensive.
What’s the point of education? It’s no longer just about getting a job (theconversation.com)
Today the purpose of education in the U.S. is
eu201207_infographic.pdf (ascd.org)
How do humans communicate: Well … we tell stories and jokes? It is this that makes us human. In the 1960’s Dr Mehrabian, from his experiments, he came to the conclusion that human communication is actually 55% visual, 38% auditory, and 7% the words. Other researchers, debunk this but all agree that non-verbal communication gets the most percentage.
Here’s a Joke:
Q: How would you describe yourself in 1 word?
A: Bad at following directions.
Update, 2023-03-11:
Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Tell me, and I forget. Teach me, and I remember. Involve me, and I learn”. I just came across this quote, it’s applicable here.