Converge Online Magazine has an article by James Schultz describing how challenging it will be in the near future for America to keep pace with other nations for jobs, innovations, and economic growth. As is typically done, the finger is pointed at U.S. schools for not preparing students with enough creativity and “skills” to compete.
<aside> Why do we always blame schools first? What about blaming other sociocultural factors? As much as I believe education — and educators–can make a difference, I am enough of a realist to know that there are often bigger issues at play then whether a kindergarten teacher spends too much time doing lecture or rote memorization. It’s usually just easier to blame schools, which is why we do it. But, I’m an educator, and this is an education blog, so I’ll go back to discussing what education might offer to match these challenges </aside>
So, back to school-bashing. Schultz states
Retiring baby boomers are creating a vacuum that is not likely to be filled with the students currently being educated in American schools. Why? Because the American educational system, having hit its stride in the 19th century, is finding it difficult to maintain a sure footing in the 21st. Meanwhile, despite a dire need for their presence, business remains largely absent from most U.S. classrooms.
Yes, but what can we do about this? How can we regain our “sure footing”? Later, Schultz quotes William Hunter, director of the Office of International Students and Scholars at Lehigh University as writing that students need to be globally competent, not just domestically competent.
“U.S. students entering the workforce cannot be effective if they are only domestically competent … The problem sounds easy to solve: just hone up on global competencies and you’ll be able to meet the needs of a globalized job market. Not so fast. There is currently no agreed upon definition of what it means to be globally competent or how to obtain such worldwide savvy.”
I think he’s right. If you take a functionalist view of education, that the purpose of education is to function as a preparation for the economic marketplace, then we have focused for too long on preparing students for the American marketplace. All of the testing that students take to decide what their careers should be, and all the talk about what they’ll do as they grow up revolves around domestic careers and issues. There is rarely talk of the global nature of business, economics, politics, and work besides a required entry-level language course or social studies course. Do students leave our schools understanding the global economy they will be entering? Do they think about anything beyond our sea to shining sea?
The real question, of course, is what do they need to be (note that I said be, not learn) in order to be able to compete in a global economy? Stephanie Powers of the Association of Workforce Boards says in the article that we need to help students become more innovative, creative and flexible in how they work and learn.
“We’re exiting an age of conformity. That’s culturally ingrained in us,” Powers said. “The goals used to be for accuracy, routine, conformity … We have to have a creative workforce. We need to get teachers and administrators talking to the business community to see what’s really going on behind the doors of industry.”
This is one of the challenging issues about current educational accountability requirements. The appropriate desire to have quality education for each child has led to a stifling environment where what matters is memorizing answers for a test rather than exploring, creating, and constructing. At one time in our history it may have been important to memorize a lot of facts, but with Wikipedia at our fingertips, it may be more important now to develop other attributes and skills … such as creativity. And creativity is not memorized or filled in on bubble sheets. It is explored in a studio by trial and error and nurtured by mentoring and encouragement.
So how does this fit in with distance education? I don’t know, except to hope that new technologies may necessitate new pedagogies which may serve as catalysts for new educational systems. The easiest answer is that perhaps DE as an unbounded medium for learning can break down the domestic walls and help us consider learning and working from a global perspective.
technorati tags:AECT2006, BlogTracks, DE, Distance, education, global, economy
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