Why American Educators Should NOT Prepare Students for the World of Work by Gary K. Clabaugh

I once interviewed a candidate for Director of my university’s Graduate Teacher Education Program. She was a twenty-year administrative veteran of a big city school system who also had been superintendent of two suburban districts. During the interview she kept emphasizing preparing children for the world of work. So much so, in fact, that I began to wonder if she thought schools should do anything else.

I asked her if she also embraced other priorities. Looking puzzled, she replied, "Like what?" “How about encouraging the development of decent human beings?” I suggested. She frowned and said that sort of thing was up to parents and other non-school agencies. Then she added with a measure of condescension, "I seem to have a broader vision than you do of what education is about."

I still wonder how she came to that curious conclusion. But I have never wondered about the origin of her mindless commitment to schooling that focuses myopically on making the U.S. workforce more internationally competitive. That misbegotten priority has dominated every governmental education "reform" since A Nation At Risk— that 1983, Reagan-inspired, blanket condemnation of American public education.

An educator’s primary concern should not be making American workers more competitive. That goal is buncombe. American workers will remain uncompetitive so long as they earn more than their foreign counterparts, so long as public policy actually rewards the export of American jobs, and so long as corporate plutocrats care more about the thickness of their wallets than they do about America.

This is why educators should forget international competitiveness and concentrate instead on things like encouraging compassion, cultivating wisdom, sharpening thinking, searching for what is universal in the human experience, and helping kids to focus on value, not just price. No matter what our politicians and their minions urge, corporate interests should not be given priority over transcendent goals such as these.

Besides, this misdirection of public education is based on a phantasmagorical world of work that has little counterpart in reality. Far more radical changes in schooling would be required to actually prepare kids for the real world of work.

For instance, school leaders might want to further accelerate the rapidly growing outsourcing of school bus driving, cooking, janitorial services, and the like. Then more kids could actually witness loyal employees they may have known for years being discarded like an old shoe. The soon-to-be discarded might even be directed to visit classes and share their experience. Then students will be better prepared for the day when they too might be thrown away.

Periodically screwing the kids out of their lunch money would also be instructive. Leaving them hungry and frustrated would prepare them for the sort of corporate shenanigans that make retirement funds disappear.

Devoting ever-larger amounts of the school budget to administrative salaries and fringe benefits might also be helpful. It would prepare kids for a work world where employees are made worse off so that corporate chieftains can be even more ridiculously well off.

Educators might even want to close American schools, put the youngsters on the street, then open new schools for cheap-to-educate kids in places like India. That way students will be better prepared if their adult job is exported.

U.S. politicians have bullied educators about this world of work thing for so long that some have actually begun to think this is their proper prime directive. It is time for them to wise up and pursue more worthy objectives.

For additional thoughts on this topic, see Tracking in Public Education: preparation for the world of work?.

Best of Luck,

Gary K. Clabaugh

Success in College: what might influence it?

updated 091118

Vivat academia
Vivant professores
Vivat membrum quodlibet
Vivat membra quaelibet
Semper sint in flore. -- Gaudeamus Igitur, C. W. Kindeleben 1781

A lot of effort and money has recently been poured into bringing high school students up to some kind of par, “reducing the achievement gap,” as it is called. The point of this undertaking is to get kids into college. But what happens once they’re there? Except at the schools with the highest acceptance standards, the drop-out rate is astounding. What’s to be done about it?

Perhaps the more sensible question might be “Why should we expect anything else, when we consider the non-academic factors that influence college success?"

A 2007 publication by ACT, The Role of Nonacademic Factors in College Readiness and Success* lists three important kinds of non-academic factors:

1. Individual psychosocial factors, such as academic self-discipline, or commitment to school, and self-regulation, for example, emotional control, and academic self-confidence.

2. Family factors, such as attitude toward education, involvement in students’ school activities, and geographic stability

3. Career planning that identifies a good fit between students’ interests and their postsecondary work

Let’s get real here! Only the third item, career planning identifying a “good fit” – if such planning existed and were financially feasible for schools to utilize -- is something schooling could address with any hope of effectiveness.

Shooting at closing the high school achievement gap seems to be really off-target aiming, if eventually producing college graduates is the goal.

To examine these issues further, see The First-Year College Experience: Strategies for Improvement


Cordially
--- EGR

* available at http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/nonacademic_factors.pdf

Pursuing a Career in Education. It Ain’t About Student Achievement.

Just like many a big private or parochial school, big public schools are bureaucracies. And many have come to be run by administrators – escapees, often, from the classroom -- for whom career takes precedence over place. “Be true to your school!” is preached to students, few others.

A principal looks to become superintendent; a superintendent, mayor, perhaps, or state commissioner of education. “Don't rock the boat,” “Suffer fools gladly,” “Go with the majority opinion – no matter how blatantly uninformed,” are rules for getting ahead. So it is that really dealing with problems in today's schools places one's career at risk. In many places around this Home of the Brave and Land of the Free, principals (and teachers) have been removed for being too concerned with student achievement or well-being.

Consequently, some principals will deal with the problem of student misbehavior by refusing to allow it official recognition. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Tough kids aren’t bullying: they’re just “fooling around.” Girls who complain of sexual harassment are merely “flirting.” School suspension rates will be reduced by some administrative procedure – “in-house” suspensions which do not affect attendance rates, -- rather than by trying to deal with the reason for those suspensions -- an iffy if not overwhelming task.

Student achievement rates will be raised by pressuring teachers to grade less stringently. Plagiarism is accepted as a research method. Parents, especially in middle-class neighborhoods, collude in this chicanery. After all, it helps their kids get into “good” colleges (where they continue to cheat their way through advanced degrees and professional certificates). None of this, of course, helps students learn or adds to human knowledge or well-being, but such machinations can do wonders for an administrator’s career.

To examine these issues further, see Opting Out of Public School: Eluding the Bureaucracy

Cordially
EGR