"The prime function of schooling should be to equip the future generation to find jobs."

[Renew Deal]

This is an interesting question to ponder. It's on the political compass test. At first glance the answer is "strongly agree." But then I wonder if the "prime function of schooling is to equip" a person with the skills necessary to have a successful life? And is there a difference between educating a person to "find a job" and being a successful human being? Are they the same thing or is it a distinction without a difference?

Here is the thread that inspired this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1557460

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. The obvious answer is "strongly agree"?!?

How many years do you have working in education? Just curious.

[Renew Deal]

3. Zero

:shrug:

My sister is a teacher. I should ask her. ;)

[alcibiades_mystery]

23. Oh, zero experience in actual education

I see.

[Renew Deal]

42. What is "actual education?"

[alcibiades_mystery]

43. You know, like working in schools with people engaged in the act of learning

Developing pedagogy, and the like. Probably safe to say you'd mark "educator" down next to occupation, that sort of thing. You don't do any of that, and never have? Is that right?

[Renew Deal]

45. That's correct.

Never been a teacher.

[alcibiades_mystery]

46. Gotcha

...

[Renew Deal]

47. Thanks

[Marr]

2. I couldn't disagree more.

The function of schooling is to teach a person to think, and to give them some idea as to who, what, and when they are-- not to be an efficient worker bee.

[xocet]

4. +1 n/t

[Ilsa]

5. I tend to agree with you. And to teach them to have a

Fulfilling life. Not just to get a job.

[hack89]

26. But when I hire, I don't hire "thinkers"

I hire people with particular skills. Tangible, measurable skills. If we don't give kids the skills in HS or lay the groundwork for advanced education, it doesn't matter how well they "think" - they are still un-employable.

[misanthrope]

40. There are places for that called "vocational schools"**nm

**

[hack89]

44. They don't teach the skills I want

I am talking about kids with solid math and science background. Also good writing skills. All skills that are hard to come by unfortunately.

[Marr]

54. Who said those things aren't part of a good education?

Advanced math and science education is essential. It's the vocational sorts who urge only basic arithmetic and ignore things like biology.

I hire, too, for the record-- but education isn't just about who employers want in their hiring lines. It's about who you want to live next door to as well.

[jwirr]

38. Agreed.

[bvar22]

41. I'll stand with you,

and thank GAWD that there was a great deal more to my education than simply a preparation for entering the Work Force.
Becoming a good worker, or landing a good job was pretty low on the list.

No man on his death bed ever said he wished he had spent more time at WORK.
If you find yourself Living to WORK,
you missed the Life Boat.

[adigal]

52. Bingo - public education was started for an informed citizenry

so that the leaders couldn't take advantage of the little guys. Obviously, we have failed the past 30 years.

[kestrel91316]

53. AND to teach them how to learn on their own, so they can keep

learning after their formal schooling is over.

And to teach them the love of education and learning and reading.

[Odin2005]

6. "Strongly Agree" is the right-wing answer.

The right believes school is for training corporate drones. The left believes schooling is about educating good and intelligent citizens.

[yurbud]

7. I would put ''to equip CITIZENS to knowledgably participate in our DEMOCRACY''

slightly ahead of that.

A properly functioning democracy will also produce more, better, and better paying jobs as well.

[TalkingDog]

18. I'd lean toward that answer myself. Jobs don't make a functioning governement.

n/t

[Cool Logic]

21. ''to equip CITIZENS to knowledgably participate in our DEMOCRACY''

would require the teaching of something that does not exist.

Article IV - The States

Section 4 - Republican government

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

[yurbud]

48. you know what I meant.

[FreakinDJ]

8. That goes against Corp Tax Policy to Outsource American Jobs

[enlightenment]

9. The obvious answer? Hardly 'soundly agree'.

I agree with your assessment (I believe that is what you are arguing) of the difference between 'finding a job' and developing the skills necessary to become a fully functioning member of civil society.

It is not a distinction without a difference; it is a critical difference. Given their druthers, many (not all) employers would love to have docile, easy to control employees - independent thinkers are a potential problem. Even academia exhibits that need to control the people that work in the field.

Should 'schooling' equip people to think - or equip them to understand their 'place' in the corporate world? I'll stick with helping people learn to think.

[midnight]

10. I think our public schools are up to the task of preparing great thinkers for great jobs...

[sudopod]

11. Exactly! School is not job training. nt

[Sarah Ibarruri]

12. First, there are no jobs. They're now in China and India. Second, education is for far more than

just finding jobs.

[demmiblue]

13. Not the obvious answer at all (for reasons stated above). n/t

[snot]

14. See Marmar / Chris Hedges:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x597322 :

Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System

Posted on Apr 10, 2011
By Chris Hedges

A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers—those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential—and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Behind program, modeled on the “Texas Miracle,” is a fraud. It worked no better than our deregulated financial system. But when you shut out debate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.

Passing bubble tests celebrates and rewards a peculiar form of analytical intelligence. This kind of intelligence is prized by money managers and corporations. They don’t want employees to ask uncomfortable questions or examine existing structures and assumptions. They want them to serve the system. These tests produce men and women who are just literate and numerate enough to perform basic functions and service jobs. The tests elevate those with the financial means to prepare for them. They reward those who obey the rules, memorize the formulas and pay deference to authority. Rebels, artists, independent thinkers, eccentrics and iconoclasts—those who march to the beat of their own drum—are weeded out.

“Imagine,” said a public school teacher in New York City, who asked that I not use his name, “going to work each day knowing a great deal of what you are doing is fraudulent, knowing in no way are you preparing your students for life in an ever more brutal world, knowing that if you don’t continue along your scripted test prep course and indeed get better at it you will be out of a job. Up until very recently, the principal of a school was something like the conductor of an orchestra: a person who had deep experience and knowledge of the part and place of every member and every instrument. In the past 10 years we’ve had the emergence of both Mike Bloomberg’s Leadership Academy and Eli Broad’s Superintendents Academy, both created exclusively to produce instant principals and superintendents who model themselves after CEOs. How is this kind of thing even legal? How are such ‘academies’ accredited? What quality of leader needs a ‘leadership academy’? What kind of society would allow such people to run their children’s schools? The high-stakes tests may be worthless as pedagogy but they are a brilliant mechanism for undermining the school systems, instilling fear and creating a rationale for corporate takeover. There is something grotesque about the fact the education reform is being led not by educators but by financers and speculators and billionaires.” ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_the_united_states_is_destroying_her_education_system_20110410

[snot]

22. See also Žižek: "the goal [of edu. reform] is that....we should all become....specialist serviceman

The video and transcript here, from a recent program featuring Amy Goodman moderating a conversation between Julian Assange and Slavoj Žižek, here: http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/7/5/watch_full_video_of_wikileaks_julian_assange_philosopher_slavoj_iek_with_amy_goodman

-- in particular, Žižek's comment: "I see WikiLeaks as part of a global struggle which doesn’t concern only in the narrow sense this domain of right to know, in the sense of right to information and so on, but even education. You know, you—by "you," I mean U.K. citizens here—what horrors are being made now in the U.K. university reform, new privatizations and so on and so on. This is all one concerted attack on the public use of reason. It goes on all around Europe. The name is so-called Bologna high education reform, and the goal is very clear. They say it. It’s to make universities more responsive to social life, to social problems. It sounds nice. What it really means is that we should all become experts. As a French guy, later minister, explained to me in a debate in Paris. For example, cars are burning in Paris suburbs. What we need is psychologists who will tell us how to control the crowd, urbanists who will tell us how to restructure the streets so that the crowd is easy to break up or whatever. Like, we should be here as a kind of a ideological or specialist serviceman to resolve problems formulated by others. I think this is the end of intellectual life as we know it."

[DevonRex]

15. I said agree but not strongly. But that means a wide range of

careers that they must be exposed to, including literature and art and music and sport in addition to a much more rigorous math and science curriculum.

[Davis_X_Machina]

16. This is America...

...where you are what you own, and what you own is dependent mostly on what you earn.

Don't worry, though. In twenty years you won't be able to get a BA at a land grant university, and STEM is the only thing high schools will teach.

The shift has already started.

[Lucian]

17. I strongly disagree with that statement.

Learning expands the mind, not to equip future generations to find jobs. If the prime function of school is just to ready kids for jobs, then why go through high school and learn? Why not let 12 year olds just go into a tech or trade school to learn how to work?

[canoeist52]

30. Please don't diss trade schools.

Kids who attend Vocational schools receive a well-rounded academic education in addition to learning a trade. My

daughter's Vocational high school had one of the highest percentage of students passing the MCAS test in the area. She

worked hard for her diploma.

[defendandprotect]

19. No -- prime purpose of education should be a liberal education affording the student...

the opportunity to educate themselves --

We've seen this in the Dem Party going back to the slime Dick Gephardt --

who was pushing the idea that our schools should educate students along

lines of what corporations want --

Remember that corporations used to TRAIN EMPLOYEES to do the jobs they wanted done.

Now -- we were for a while PAYING FAST FOOD ENTERPRISES LIKE PIZZA HUT AND WENDY'S

AND MACDONALD'S to train "noobies" -- !!!

Of course, the corporations found they could profit even further if the employee

left after taining so a new employee could be "trained" at the expense of government!!


This is fascism, folks -- corporate fascism for elite profit and control.

It's here -- now --

[leveymg]

20. That is the "right-authoritarian" response. But, this society is now in such desperate straights,

what was sneeringly looked down upon in the '40s as "vocational education", if it puts food on the table, may not be such a bad idea today. That's said by someone who attended the New School for Social Research, is a Frankfurt School adherent, and who has read and still agrees with Theodor Adorno and Kurt Lewin.

But, a job is basic, as is freedom and creativity. A good Society and Education should cultivate all of them, together.

[DevonRex]

34. There was a lot of thought in my answer.

If there is a wide array of jobs they are exposed to and trained for, ones that match the talents and passions of the students then I agree. And since it was my test, I could make up that world in my head. One in which all students are exposed to art and music and literature as well as math and science and all sorts of other things. But one in which they will be able to work in their field and contribute to society when they're done with school.

[eilen]

35. I think it is important for a well rounded person to know

how to actually do something useful they can support themselves on. Whether it is making something or performing a critical direct-economy service. At my company there are jobs where all people do is check stuff all day long, and they have managers who keep track of stuff they are checking and there are big meetings and serious conversation about stuff checked-- produces absolutely nothing for nobody but is a pencil pushing type of job to ensure two things: compliance with regs, performance benchmarks which are tied into reimbursement to a degree. On top of the checking --all the work is sent to an outside agency who checks it and spits back reports and then all the data is sent to some central clearinghouse where I am sure there are plenty more checkers of stuff other people did.

One day someone might just design a computer program to do all that and all those jobs will disappear.

But we will always need someone to cut our hair, help us with taxes, wipe our ass after surgery, fix the plumbing and the air conditioning, hem our pants/resole our shoes and cook food.

[leveymg]

37. The most important thing about a well-rounded education is to know the

difference between work and play. Those who have the good fortune to have work that is intrinsically interesting enough to be play should not impose their own work habits on others. Upper management and professionals often enjoy their work so much that they do it constantly, but that habit of life and long hours becomes exhausting tedium that wears out those who do not enjoy their work. Most commercial organizations today are large-scale organized cruelty that sap the life from people. You see it on people's faces when you walk into places like IKEA, and all the colorful surroundings of consumer culture can't compensate for the simple fact that most work is a form of slow death for most people.

The fact-checking firm serves limited purposes, and even if the work is so tedious and it can be (and eventually will be) automated, it is still necessary. But, under no circumstances should such work occupy more than one-third of our lives, and it should be reduced as much as possible.

That illustrates the difference between work and play. Those who are fortunate enough to have jobs that are fun and intrinsically interesting are a privileged minority. They should not assume that it is that way for all, and should not impose their own work habits on others, but should be well enough educated to understand their social, moral and ethical duty to share more of the material rewards with those less fortunate.

[Cool Logic]

24. "The prime(ary) function of schooling should be to equip the future generations"

to think, to understand, to integrate and to prove. They must also be taught the essentials of that which was learned in the past and be equipped to acquire future knowledge by means of their own curiosity and effort.

[Taverner]

25. These days, the prime function of schooling is to train kids to be consumers

And not smarter ones at that...

[Romulox]

27. Sick of the rich extolling the benefits of education qua education

It doesn't do ANYTHING to feed a poor man's family.

[ZombieHorde]

28. For me, the first glance answer is "strongly disagree."

The prime function of schooling should be teaching people how to think. The various subjects should be tools to help the thinker.

[hack89]

33. Show me a job description that says "thinker"

schools have to do both - yes they need to learn how to think but they also need to acquire specific skills - to either get a job out of HS or to go on to advanced education or training. It cannot be an either/or situation.

[ZombieHorde]

36. You are thinking of subjects, while I am thinking of presentation.

There are different ways to teach each subject. In my opinion, teaching a subject for a trade is less desirable than teaching the same subject for the development of thought.

For example, my wife has a degree in nursing. Many of her teachers structured their classes around the nursing trade. Because of this, important information was left out about the human body because nurses don't really need to know it to practice their trade. My wife thought this was bad because the lack of information impeded the nurses' ability to fully understand what is happening to patients, and therefor, the health care offered will be negatively affected during weird and/or emergency situations. My wife teaches a college human anatomy lab, and tries to offer a thinking based learning experience.

[saras]

29. The prime function of schooling is to perform toilet training

For public schooling, the FIRST responsibility ought to be "competent citizen and educated voter."
Secondarily, "successful human being."

Job training is WAY down the list - the job environment needs to adapt to the environments desired by citizens, not the other way around. Ergonomics is a good example - this needs to be coming from the citizenry and not businesses, who simply can't be trusted to oppose their own economic interest in order to do the right thing.

[PATRICK]

31. More classes

for Hindustani, Chinese, etc. etc.? Sounds like a future flourishing for Modern Languages degrees. Of course you only need a license to drive trucks of immigrants across the Canadian border.

[hunter]

32. Strongly disagree.

The undocumented immigrants working in the fields have jobs, and maybe if they are lucky, a sixth grade education.

They all found jobs.

I'm sure we would still have doctors and artists and mechanics if everyone was limited to a sixth grade education. Those jobs wouldn't go away, but then would your really want somebody with a sixth grade education diagnosing your appendicitis and doing the surgery? Do you want to fly in an airplane piloted by someone with a kid's understanding of physics, weather, geography, and navigation?

[aikoaiko]

39. the primary function of formal education is the protection and maintenance of civilization.

At least from my point of view.

[eppur_se_muova]

49. Thanks, I was hoping someone would put it that way.

That's the truly long-term view; thinking beyond the current generation.

Jobs and industries come and go, and nations do not last forever. But the accumulated wisdom of past ages must be preserved and passed on.

[Earth_First]

50. Ahh, yes. The "Job Factory" n/t

[Puregonzo1188]

51. Interesting--I took the same test today (I had taken it before, but after seeing the thread was

wondering if my score had changed any) and I answered "strongly disagree."

[Proles]

55. Personally....

Personally, I thought that question was rather vague.