© 2012 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. Many people hate working. They go to work grudgingly each day and watch the clock to be able to go home. It is sad. They have jobs which they can do but do not like in the least. In our society we almost expect that people will not like their jobs and that the real interesting things will be at home or play.I started writing newspaper columns in the 1970s and continue to this day but the move into radio talk shows which I do three hours a day; five days a week was somewhat a surprise. There was no one in my past who anticipated me becoming a radio talk show host. Well, my parents did call me “Little Filibuster” at times because of my conversational ability. But public school beat any conversation out of me quickly. So I was like all other kids in the 1950s going to school.
Sputnik was launched by the Soviets while I was in Second Grade. This focused the schools on the need to prepare me for competing with the Soviets (who no longer exist) and every day in school they had designs on me getting a college degree. And I did. But the degree, the piece of paper, has no bearing on my career in talk.
The college degree really was a place for me to mature each time I went to school. Early on and throughout my life I have been a self educator. Public school never had my attention. By high school the worn out old textbooks were rarely opened but I reveled in the thousands of books I had in my bedroom. I could get books at Second Hand Stores for a nickel and did.
Fast forward to our educational system today: we now see schools where most students pump data and ideas into their heads daily from their social websites and from the media. They have several data devices and attend to them even at wrong times like when they are driving. Then they go sit in class.
While I am painting with a large brush here, the intense data world many students live in bears little resemblance to the factory model of education in schools where it is not the individual interests that drive the moment; it is the group learn method of teaching done in schools. Individually each student follows their interest on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter - exactly to their interest. They have data mining and harvest techniques that are robust.
It asks the question: are the schools really preparing students for what the next decades will bring? That is a daunting task to anticipate the needs of a workforce decades in advance. Of course the next workers must be literate and numerate. They must be able to communicate and to do math. What else? Therein lies the rub.
The public schools are inculcating the culture of America on students while the same students are deeply immersed in their own culture out of school. The out of school curriculum does not resemble that in school. Which do they need for the future?
Thirty years from now workers will still have to communicate and do math. But what will be the things that allow students to get jobs? Perhaps it will be attitudes and a lot of stuff not learned in school, rather, learned at home. What will our future parents teach our future students about getting up and doing a job? It may be the most important things those students learn or not learn, unfortunately.
What students needed when I was growing up, what they need now and what they will need in the future is the ability to self-teach themselves what they, themselves, want and need to learn. User on demand self-education is still the future of education.
Posts
