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Public Education, the last vestige of the Industrial Age?
- By Edward L. Davis
- Published 05/24/2007
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Edward L. Davis
Edward L. Davis is the author of Lessons For Tomorrow, Bringing America's Schools Back From The Brink, an award-winning call for a new design of America's public education system.The book is available on http://Amazon.com at 30% off. Davis is Vice President of Education Policy for the National Education Foundation, and lives in Northern Michigan. Contact the author at [email protected].
View all articles by Edward L. Davis
Edward L. Davis
If you believe that effective education is central to the issues we face as a nation, consider this: We are collectively looking the other way while our public education system sacrifices brain power to bolster class division and economic power. It is a needless and tragic dichotomy—perpetuated by outmoded design and erroneous ideas about what it takes to prepare young minds for the marketplace.
The term 'human capital' is often used these days to refer to our efforts to train people to do economically desirable work. It represents a rather narrow view of human development--a holdover from the industrial economy of the early-to-mid 20th century. It considers human worth only in terms of contribution to economic growth.
The skills needed for a 21st century marketplace are different and often more complex than we imagine. To cite just one example, today's workers often need the ability to engage in collaborative work that was unnecessary for the factory workers of the last century. More importantly, the notion of workplace skills alone is way too narrow to be the only priority for an American education.
Our education system was designed and organized around the priorities of 19th century industrialists and investment bankers to prepare our populace for factory work. It's design and general aims have not changed since then. It is still a vehicle for developing prescribed behaviors and a narrow set of skills. It does not, for the most part, focus on building cognitive skills, or what we commonly refer to as intelligence.
The end products of human capital-driven education are workplace skills, and the willingness to participate in our economy—to be good workers and enthusiastic consumers. This would be acceptable to most of us if it didn't preclude developing the full powers of our brains.
The perceived importance of an economic (and cognitive) underclass is that its members will do the work that requires little creativity or brainpower, and not complain too much. They will be spenders and partake of the spoils of enhanced productivity, not by becoming smarter, securing more interesting work and more money, but by purchasing things—things that are cheaper and available to more of us. For this, it can be argued; intelligence is not a key ingredient. In fact, it may be a disincentive to play.
Are we trading in our brainpower for purchasing power? Taking the 'human capital' view, some may argue that over-education of the underclass produces a set of problems that create dissatisfaction, underemployment, and unrealistic expectations.
But, what about intelligence? How important is it? Do we need it to participate in our own governance, to realize a true democracy? Do we need it to improve our lives, to create high-functioning relationships and communities? Is it not intelligence that enables us to evolve from mere survival: defensive, aggressive, and coping behavior--to transcendence: compassion, tolerance, individual and social evolution? Our current system of schooling, by the nature of its outmoded design, ignores these urgent human needs.
Cognitive capital must now become a component of human capital. Our intelligence is, in fact, what make us unique as a species. Perhaps the need to develop our cognitive capacities, so that we have the ability to learn, grow and evolve, is a human instinct. To ignore it, then, would diminish our humanity and our human potential. But, this is more than an indictment of our social evolution.
Information is now everywhere. The raw materials to cultivate knowledge are ubiquitous. The means to cultivate brainpower, so that we may use all of this information to our individual and collective advantage, are known to us, far more than ever before. Yet we ignore them, preferring to focus on economic behavior—in effect producing able workers and consumers. We don't like to think of ourselves this way, but look around you. Ask yourself, are we making visible progress? Are we developing smarter people? Are our relationships and communities visibly evolving?
If these are worthwhile and central human aspirations, why do we settle for the education system we have? Roughly 40% of American adults are functionally illiterate, or read below a 5th grade reading standard. 21 out of 22 Americans fails to read even a single book within the span of a year. What has become of our innate curiosity, our desire to understand the world around us?
If you care about these questions and want to focus on a solution, turn to the design of our education system.
America's young people spend roughly 6 hours a day, 1300 hours a year for at least 12 years in school? Where else do we have a more substantial opportunity to build intelligence? Certainly, parents, families, communities, churches and other institutions will contribute to human development, but we expect schools to do the job of building brains. They are not.
Cognitive capacity is 'heuristic'. It must involve curiosity, asking questions, exploration, discovery, the derivation of meaning and solutions, the process of working backward through prior conclusions and questioning them. It uses abstraction to further understand and develop the concrete. It is the antithesis of modern educational method, which considers heuristics a diversion.
Our current approach to building brains is behavioral, not cognitive. Behavioral method…drill, practice, repetition, memorization, testing and comparing students using identical outputs and measures is, of course, the principal way we educate today. It is a conveyor belt for producing behaviors and prescribed skills, but not intelligence. Intelligence cannot be produced using such a method. It is unique to each individual and cannot be developed as a homogenous product.
True intelligence fills in vacuums. It seeks un-trodden paths, individual fulfillment and unanswered human dilemmas. It does not like its sustenance pre-digested or commodified as in traditional schooling. Co-operating with the natural workings of the brain would progressively alter the way we nurture human beings. It would equip them with skills for living, not just skills for becoming productive.
Do you want to stand for human intelligence? You don't have to give up human productivity to do so. In fact the only chance, we Americans have to remain productive on a "flat" economic playing field is to be the smarter players.
The real irony here is that, in focusing on a narrow definition of human capital, we are failing to produce high-functioning intelligence as a reliable product and we are failing to produce a competitive workforce. Today, the only chance we have to compete successfully with our counterparts in the developing world is to be smarter and more innovative. We can longer compete on labor costs or quality.
It is time we assumed the risk of discovering what happens when we work to build a learning society, where "lifelong learning" actually translates into learning as an end rather than simply a means.
We can have it all: smarter citizens and economic success. At this point, in fact, we need to have smarter citizens in order to grow economically. Citizens with workplace skills but undeveloped raw intelligence will increasingly fail to comprehend their abilities and their responsibilities in their communities, in the workplace and in the world. They will cease to become agents in their own lives, once their basic survival needs are met. Is this the America we want?
The leverage to build a learning culture is in redesigning our education system from top to bottom, using brain science, technology, macroeconomic considerations, and new kinds of community involvement to fashion an approach to education that builds and challenges cognitive capacity from the very beginning.
Much of our resistance to action lies in the fact that a new design would look very different from our own educational experience. It would focus on the efficiencies of learning rather than teaching. It would send students in search of meaning rather than force-feeding them official knowledge. It would create highly independent learners who consulted with teachers to help them achieve their own objectives rather than depending on teachers to set objectives and provide "officially" relevant information.
We have to understand what is wrong with the current picture before we can picture the classroom of the future.
Our present system of education is obsolete. Throwing more money at it, making classrooms smaller, training teachers further, or raising outmoded standards cannot repair it. It must be redesigned. It won't happen until we the people see the need and collectively make it known that we don't want it fixed. We want it redesigned.
Edward L. Davis is the author of Lessons For Tomorrow, Bringing America's Schools Back From The Brink, an award-winning call for a new design of America's public education system. The book is available on Amazon.com at 30% off. Davis is Vice President of Education Policy for the National Education Foundation, and lives in Northern Michigan. Contact the author at [email protected].
Published May 24, 2007
If you believe that effective education is central to the issues we face as a nation, consider this: We are collectively looking the other way while our public education system sacrifices brain power to bolster class division and economic power. It is a needless and tragic dichotomy—perpetuated by outmoded design and erroneous ideas about what it takes to prepare young minds for the marketplace.
The term 'human capital' is often used these days to refer to our efforts to train people to do economically desirable work. It represents a rather narrow view of human development--a holdover from the industrial economy of the early-to-mid 20th century. It considers human worth only in terms of contribution to economic growth.
The skills needed for a 21st century marketplace are different and often more complex than we imagine. To cite just one example, today's workers often need the ability to engage in collaborative work that was unnecessary for the factory workers of the last century. More importantly, the notion of workplace skills alone is way too narrow to be the only priority for an American education.
Our education system was designed and organized around the priorities of 19th century industrialists and investment bankers to prepare our populace for factory work. It's design and general aims have not changed since then. It is still a vehicle for developing prescribed behaviors and a narrow set of skills. It does not, for the most part, focus on building cognitive skills, or what we commonly refer to as intelligence.
The end products of human capital-driven education are workplace skills, and the willingness to participate in our economy—to be good workers and enthusiastic consumers. This would be acceptable to most of us if it didn't preclude developing the full powers of our brains.
The perceived importance of an economic (and cognitive) underclass is that its members will do the work that requires little creativity or brainpower, and not complain too much. They will be spenders and partake of the spoils of enhanced productivity, not by becoming smarter, securing more interesting work and more money, but by purchasing things—things that are cheaper and available to more of us. For this, it can be argued; intelligence is not a key ingredient. In fact, it may be a disincentive to play.
Are we trading in our brainpower for purchasing power? Taking the 'human capital' view, some may argue that over-education of the underclass produces a set of problems that create dissatisfaction, underemployment, and unrealistic expectations.
But, what about intelligence? How important is it? Do we need it to participate in our own governance, to realize a true democracy? Do we need it to improve our lives, to create high-functioning relationships and communities? Is it not intelligence that enables us to evolve from mere survival: defensive, aggressive, and coping behavior--to transcendence: compassion, tolerance, individual and social evolution? Our current system of schooling, by the nature of its outmoded design, ignores these urgent human needs.
Cognitive capital must now become a component of human capital. Our intelligence is, in fact, what make us unique as a species. Perhaps the need to develop our cognitive capacities, so that we have the ability to learn, grow and evolve, is a human instinct. To ignore it, then, would diminish our humanity and our human potential. But, this is more than an indictment of our social evolution.
Information is now everywhere. The raw materials to cultivate knowledge are ubiquitous. The means to cultivate brainpower, so that we may use all of this information to our individual and collective advantage, are known to us, far more than ever before. Yet we ignore them, preferring to focus on economic behavior—in effect producing able workers and consumers. We don't like to think of ourselves this way, but look around you. Ask yourself, are we making visible progress? Are we developing smarter people? Are our relationships and communities visibly evolving?
If these are worthwhile and central human aspirations, why do we settle for the education system we have? Roughly 40% of American adults are functionally illiterate, or read below a 5th grade reading standard. 21 out of 22 Americans fails to read even a single book within the span of a year. What has become of our innate curiosity, our desire to understand the world around us?
If you care about these questions and want to focus on a solution, turn to the design of our education system.
Cognitive capacity is 'heuristic'. It must involve curiosity, asking questions, exploration, discovery, the derivation of meaning and solutions, the process of working backward through prior conclusions and questioning them. It uses abstraction to further understand and develop the concrete. It is the antithesis of modern educational method, which considers heuristics a diversion.
Our current approach to building brains is behavioral, not cognitive. Behavioral method…drill, practice, repetition, memorization, testing and comparing students using identical outputs and measures is, of course, the principal way we educate today. It is a conveyor belt for producing behaviors and prescribed skills, but not intelligence. Intelligence cannot be produced using such a method. It is unique to each individual and cannot be developed as a homogenous product.
True intelligence fills in vacuums. It seeks un-trodden paths, individual fulfillment and unanswered human dilemmas. It does not like its sustenance pre-digested or commodified as in traditional schooling. Co-operating with the natural workings of the brain would progressively alter the way we nurture human beings. It would equip them with skills for living, not just skills for becoming productive.
Do you want to stand for human intelligence? You don't have to give up human productivity to do so. In fact the only chance, we Americans have to remain productive on a "flat" economic playing field is to be the smarter players.
The real irony here is that, in focusing on a narrow definition of human capital, we are failing to produce high-functioning intelligence as a reliable product and we are failing to produce a competitive workforce. Today, the only chance we have to compete successfully with our counterparts in the developing world is to be smarter and more innovative. We can longer compete on labor costs or quality.
It is time we assumed the risk of discovering what happens when we work to build a learning society, where "lifelong learning" actually translates into learning as an end rather than simply a means.
We can have it all: smarter citizens and economic success. At this point, in fact, we need to have smarter citizens in order to grow economically. Citizens with workplace skills but undeveloped raw intelligence will increasingly fail to comprehend their abilities and their responsibilities in their communities, in the workplace and in the world. They will cease to become agents in their own lives, once their basic survival needs are met. Is this the America we want?
The leverage to build a learning culture is in redesigning our education system from top to bottom, using brain science, technology, macroeconomic considerations, and new kinds of community involvement to fashion an approach to education that builds and challenges cognitive capacity from the very beginning.
Much of our resistance to action lies in the fact that a new design would look very different from our own educational experience. It would focus on the efficiencies of learning rather than teaching. It would send students in search of meaning rather than force-feeding them official knowledge. It would create highly independent learners who consulted with teachers to help them achieve their own objectives rather than depending on teachers to set objectives and provide "officially" relevant information.
We have to understand what is wrong with the current picture before we can picture the classroom of the future.
Our present system of education is obsolete. Throwing more money at it, making classrooms smaller, training teachers further, or raising outmoded standards cannot repair it. It must be redesigned. It won't happen until we the people see the need and collectively make it known that we don't want it fixed. We want it redesigned.
Edward L. Davis is the author of Lessons For Tomorrow, Bringing America's Schools Back From The Brink, an award-winning call for a new design of America's public education system. The book is available on Amazon.com at 30% off. Davis is Vice President of Education Policy for the National Education Foundation, and lives in Northern Michigan. Contact the author at [email protected].
Published May 24, 2007
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Comments
Comment #1 (Posted by Jill)
Rating:
I found the clarity and focus of this article to be lacking. I kept asking "so what do you want to DO" as the author went on and on about intelligence and cognitive capacity and the like. I find myself somewhat agreeing with the premise, and especially that "throwing more money at it, making classrooms smaller, training teachers further, or raising outmoded standards" won't fix the problem. I am most concerned that we are trying to turn our schools into job training sites. Public schools started out as a way to impart a common knowledge about our country and a fondness for it, as well as encourage a "melting pot" mentality so that all people groups who arrive here would encourage the next generation to become AMERICAN. (not hyphenated Americans) Schools need to demand an exercise of the memory, drilling math and history and other important facts into the minds of all students. If that is happening, THEN intelligence will be fostered. Sending students out "in search of meaning" simply will not work without coupling it with what the author calls "force-feeding them official knowledge". Nearly no child has an intrinsic ability or desire to progress from a me-centered toddler to a productive, intelligent, giving member of society. The sort of learning the author ends with it exactly what I engage in as an adult, having learned in school all about my country and how to read and write. I needed the school to teach the basics, untainted with political views, so that I could head out into the world and seek information I deemed relevant to me. There is plenty of information relevant to all that should be taught instead of wasting students' time with social engineering and diversity training. We are all in this together, and we need an educational system that encourages that mindset.
Comment #2 (Posted by walt)
Rating:
Strongly agree that we need to adjust schools to prepare students to become lifelong learners and creative thinkers. However, basic skills such as reading, writing and math are necessary to reach the goal of effective creative thinking. Perhaps, the existing education system may be appropriate, with some tweaking, for the early elementary years with a movement to a different method of teaching/learning initiated at the secondary age level. Students are more developmentally prepared to abstractly think, cooperate and question at this age level, also.
Are there "leaders" who would want to move in this direction. If so, maybe they need to be identified so efforts can be organized towards improvements.
One additional thought: Perhaps the educational system continues to function in the "traditional" ways because the present goal is to produce "good quality workers" and not thinkers. "Thinkers" may challenge the continuation of the existing system and distribution of wealth/power/education.
Comment #3 (Posted by Colleen)
Rating:
I agree with the author. Schools, especially universities, are increasingly coming under attack with the claim that they are not doing enough to prepare graduates for the needs of industry. Is it any wonder then that we get the same old results using the same old tactics? Universities should be teaching people how to think - not telling them what to think! I am not saying "do not teach content knowledge in mathematics, readings, science, social studies, etc..." I am saying that providing skills and content knowledge void of any deep thinking about the content and void of the ability to engage in problem solving and rich discussion or real world applications of the content, do little to advance learning. A move away from “industrial” reasons for public education is long overdue.
