Education I Support Most of What Robinson

Education

I support most of what Robinson is saying that video. The core of his argument is that the education system geared more towards creating workers than thinkers, and that does seem to be the natural outcome of a lot of decisions in the education system. Schools that remove arts, physical education and other such classes to focus on standardized test subjects are being economically motivated to churn out workers. This occurs because it is easier for the education system to measure success with standardized tests, and measuring success represents a way for politicians and those running the education to demonstrate to parents and taxpayers -- stakeholders -- that they are doing their jobs running the education system.

This does call into question the idea of universal public education. On principle, universal public education is a tremendously powerful tool for domestic policy. An educated populace is a successful populace, especially in the Information Age, but this has always been the case. If a nation wants to be competitive in the world, it needs to education its people, and it needs to spend a lot of money to do that. A purely private system where education is not accessible to all is correlated with the inability to progress economically -- you can see this today all across the developing world.

However, Theodoulou's points about the way that public policy is created and implemented raise some concerns about the use of government to provide education. This is particularly the case in light of what Robinson describes. Public policy is developed when issues are identified, stakeholders analyzed, compromises made and the education system today reflects these wide-ranging influences. Certainly corporate interests have a seat at the table. They know that they can import high-end workers from anywhere in the world, or even outsource, but they also need a pliable populace. Over time, this begins to manifest in standardized testing and a focus away from critical thinking skills. The latter occurs not by strict design, but through the focus on specialization that drives the school system to only focus on specific subjects and specific ways of thinking.

Robinson is correct in that this approach shortchanges students and leads to further problems. The idea that a distracted child should be attributed a fictional ailment and pumped full of drugs is absurd, yet it has become commonplace in the U.S. education system because distracted children in the classroom reduce scores on standardized tests. The priorities of the system that drive policy are oriented to the needs of business and the needs of those within the education system itself.

Parents unfortunately are culpable as well. In America's society -- so addicted to achievement -- parents equate measurables with desirables, leading them to support the way that the system is constructed. They must, after all, put their kids on drugs, so there is a level of active support. The one stakeholder who has no say in the education is the student. Robinson is right -- society benefits from a surplus of ideas, of thought, and of capabilities. The problem is that the prevailing view today is that these things are not congruent with the needs of the other stakeholders.

This begs the question who should be responsible for education. In a world where two parents must work in order just to provide the basics of life to their family -- having long-since outsourced critical tasks like food production -- the individual is in no position to provide any more than supplemental education. While there is a role for the parent, it is not as the primary provider of education unless the whole of society is to be restructured. This leaves government. A good argument for federal provision of education is that education is part of the long-run economic strategy of the nation, something that is generally the purview of the federal government. This bumps up against the fact that states also plan for education. However, with labor mobility being national, this becomes a federal issue -- if states want a certain type of worker, they are better off sourcing that type nationally anyway. The problem is that the federal vision of education is heading in the direction of mass standardization. If states were left to manage their own education systems, there might be better diversity of education in the country, and states with more enlightened systems will see better economic outcomes and will attract smarter parents who reject lesser philosophies of education. The downside of leaving education to the states is that this is relatively inefficient, and creates disparities of opportunity. Those most affected by this -- children -- have no choice in where they will receive their schooling.

Zhao (2006) mirrors Robison's argument that focusing on creativity is critical to repairing the education system. In a globalized world, it is argued, the United States must compete against all other countries. The best way to do that is to leverage the wealth of the country to create a nation that is capable of innovation, and that means an emphasis on creativity in the education system. Creativity is a major competitive advantage for the United States, and the education system fails to recognize this. An overhaul of the education system should focus on fostering creativity and critical thinking, and move away from standardization and the current trend towards ignorance in many states.

Laursen (2005) also highlights that the education system focuses too much of "fixing" kids who do not conform. This view takes the idea that our children are outputs and education is a throughput process. Laursen recommends building positive peer cultures, and focusing on such positive, communicative approaches to problem-solving. Surely we can do better than doping up children whose attention wanders. Taking the cue from Laursen, we need to create an education system that helps children grow, not memorize, and that guides their passage into adulthood, not measures them with computer-generated test results. Certainly we need to stop anointing them with a variety of invented maladies to boost the profits of pharmaceutical companies, all the while doing absolutely nothing to help the child's development.

At the core of this recommended approach is to put the needs of the children first, ahead of the needs of the other stakeholders. Our current approach meets the needs of misguided, achievement-centric parents and a corporate world that prefers its employees fall in line. This is not going to help America compete in the future. When we look at the millennial generation, this is an entrepreneur, creative generation that responds to challenges, and that is despite growing in the antecedent of the current education system. We need to take the education system back to meeting the needs of growing children, and mold them into creative, critical thinkers who can genuinely lead this country in the future.