Now I don't expect this to be a very popular opinion and I hope I am wrong in this thinking.
As I read the Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner I started to think about his message; students are not prepared for the workforce. I started to think about how he was so right, that our education system was designed simply to have students come out and go to work on the assembly line and make sure that they had enough knowledge to make sure they took orders and were able to do their job.
My question is this; what is different about what we are doing now? All we are doing is preparing kids to go to work in the assembly line only this assembly line is one that revolves around the internet in a office not a factory. I guess what I am starting to see is that the skills that employers (may or may not) have wanted for the past 150 years are now outdated. Our schools are broken because they don't make our kids ready to work the present day assembly line, the workplace has to train them in the way they want things done and CEO's don't like that.
Here is my confusion; what is the purpose of school? Is the purpose simply to provide students with the necessary tools for them to become successful at a job once they graduate? If so then maybe I need to rethink what I am doing with my life as an educator. I did not get into education because I wanted to be the first rung on a ladder of future employment. Here is the what I am getting at because I am not arguing against having students have work after high school. What is the purpose of school? What is our main event? What is our purpose as schools? Based on the first 70 pages of this book, we are to teach kids how to write so they can email their boss when they are on the road (not so they can express themselves through words), we are to teach them to read so they can understand and find vital info about how to be a better employee (not to be moved by poetry). We are making critical thinkers without critical feelers.
I think on this trajectory we will be taking the heart out of school. It will become a work place. You don't go to school to develop as a person to learn about the world simply because of the beauty that exists in it, you go to school to become a modern day assembly worker. I think there needs to be a purpose in education, but what happens when Shakespeare no longer starts to fit into the agenda of our modern day schools full of critical thinkers. Will teachers soon become the smugglers of an education that is learning something great to expand you as a person not just as a potential worker?
As I read the Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner I started to think about his message; students are not prepared for the workforce. I started to think about how he was so right, that our education system was designed simply to have students come out and go to work on the assembly line and make sure that they had enough knowledge to make sure they took orders and were able to do their job.
My question is this; what is different about what we are doing now? All we are doing is preparing kids to go to work in the assembly line only this assembly line is one that revolves around the internet in a office not a factory. I guess what I am starting to see is that the skills that employers (may or may not) have wanted for the past 150 years are now outdated. Our schools are broken because they don't make our kids ready to work the present day assembly line, the workplace has to train them in the way they want things done and CEO's don't like that.
Here is my confusion; what is the purpose of school? Is the purpose simply to provide students with the necessary tools for them to become successful at a job once they graduate? If so then maybe I need to rethink what I am doing with my life as an educator. I did not get into education because I wanted to be the first rung on a ladder of future employment. Here is the what I am getting at because I am not arguing against having students have work after high school. What is the purpose of school? What is our main event? What is our purpose as schools? Based on the first 70 pages of this book, we are to teach kids how to write so they can email their boss when they are on the road (not so they can express themselves through words), we are to teach them to read so they can understand and find vital info about how to be a better employee (not to be moved by poetry). We are making critical thinkers without critical feelers.
I think on this trajectory we will be taking the heart out of school. It will become a work place. You don't go to school to develop as a person to learn about the world simply because of the beauty that exists in it, you go to school to become a modern day assembly worker. I think there needs to be a purpose in education, but what happens when Shakespeare no longer starts to fit into the agenda of our modern day schools full of critical thinkers. Will teachers soon become the smugglers of an education that is learning something great to expand you as a person not just as a potential worker?