When thinking about the future of America’s workforce I can’t help but think of any changes that may or may not be happening in the way this workforce is now being educated.
I have implied in past blogs, perhaps actually I have been more direct, of my angst regarding the nation’s public school systems and their general lack of progressivism. School systems, along with their government partners, seem to be more concerned with transforming themselves into test-prep academies rather than institutions committed to fostering the kind of wide-ranging, boundary free pioneers needed for this century’s workers. Having worked for two public school districts over a thirty-one year period I feel I’ve earned the right to talk.
America’s greatest strength moving forward in the world marketplace is our capacity for innovation, creativity, and willingness to work hard to pursue new and better ways to solve problems and to achieve a better world. Our public school systems are not set up to prepare today’s students for this kind of mission. Anchored in traditional practices that were more suited for preparing a hierarchical management-rank and file workforce arrangement means that we as a nation are missing a really big opportunity.
To be fair, many public school teachers are saints. They put up with a stressful job to perform a valuable public service when, let’s face it, many of you would not dare touch it with a ten-foot pole. Also, even though no one mentions it, because of the inadequate teacher student ratio the main task of the public school teacher is to manage large numbers of kids first, educate them second. A school administrator cannot keep the most astute pedagogical expert hired if they cannot keep a lid on a class of twenty-eight seventh graders.
So what’s the alternative? Believe me, I am not even close to having all of the answers, but every now and again I run into someone who is much further down the trail of progressive thinking on preparing the future workforce. James Paul Gee is just such a person. He teaches education at Arizona State and he gets it. Below is a link to an eleven minute interview with him that is fantastic if you care at all about the future of education, which is the same thing as caring about the future of the American worker and our place in the world.
He uses the context of video games to make some very interesting points. I don’t play video games (unless you count a few months of Space Invaders in the mid-eighties as being a player) and I am enthralled with the point he makes.
Check it out. I’d love comments on this one!
