George - Education is the skapegoat?

06/20/2013

We are now educating nearly every American child into their high school years. Most of this occurs in public schools. Is this a failure? I want to explore why education has been/is the scape goat for our nation’s most pressing problems. When individuals shirk their responsibility it seems that most problems are blamed on the lowest tier of an organization. In this case, public education, including schools are held accountable for many of our society’s hopes (civil rights) and issues (Sputnik, Asian competition).

Business and the larger community of Americans expect students to be ready to work when they leave school. What does industry want from our children as they enter the work place? How can we provide some or all of it? What we can provide are work-transferable skills, including communication, teamwork, and perseverance (maybe we can even help them develop curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-control). I don’t believe that we can teach young people the technical skills that can be immediately transferable to employers. For one thing I think that most high school students are not ready to choose a career that will be personally satisfying and lead to happiness. In Israel, high school graduates are expected to spend two years in civil or armed services before they move on to college or career opportunities. I think this gives those young adults time to mature and consider their options for the future. I also like the idea of preparing our high school graduates to enter college or a 2-year program to prepare them for a career.

What surprised me the most in the reading was the relative newness of the public high school system. High schools (and mainly for whites) are less than 100 years old – around three generations. This is not that long of a period. Yet, think of the rapid pace of industry and technology change over that same time frame. Education (private and public) was able to keep up with this change and provide graduates to meet the skilled and unskilled needs of business and industry. I am curious about the percentage of high school graduates that were needed by business in the mid-1900s and the percentage now. Black students started public high school in large numbers during the mid-1900s, Hispanic and disabled students in the 1970s. Over the relatively short period of public high school education, has industry’s requirements for skilled labor surpassed our nation’s ability to provide the appropriate skilled workers they want, like engineers and scientists? 

We educators are expected to not only provide content education to our students, but also deliver physical and emotional nourishment and healing in a caring environment. Fall short in any of these categories and we are held accountable. As teachers we know that students have many needs and those needs must be met before academic learning can proceed. We, obviously, share the responsibility for raising our nation’s children and help them meet the challenge of society’s future needs. However, teachers work relatively independently and far too many of our profession teach in traditional ways that do not prepare our students to be successful in their futures.