Comments on: Useless Education Reform

By: Dwight Furrow

Dwight Furrow — Wed, 13 May 2009 01:39:46 +0000

I think there is another problem with the vocational model. It tends to put people onto the vocational track too quickly.

Melinda’s experience with unmotivated students is widely shared of course. But some of those students do find something to turn them on eventually, although in some cases it takes many years. Having an institution, such as a community college, where students who lack direction can experiment is an enormously valuable cultural resource. Our society benefits greatly from giving people second and third chances. This is especially true given the paucity of jobs that don’t require college-level skills, as Ian points out.

Our educational system is set up to encourage the expectation that, when you turn 18, you are supposed to know what is important and what you want to do with your life. But that itself is an artifact of the instrumentalist approach to education I mentioned in the post. Many 18 yr.olds don’t know enough about how the world works or have enough self-knowledge to have clearly defined goals. And most people without clearly defined goals are unmotivated.

I think the flexibility of our system (which is unfortunately on the way out) is a feature not a bug.

By: Ian Duckles

Ian Duckles — Tue, 12 May 2009 22:32:21 +0000

I thought the suggestion of vocational schools was quite interesting. As an undergraduate I minored in German and was fascinated to learn about their alternative educational system in which there was not an automatic expectation that everyone would go to college. Perhaps the only problem with a vocational school model is that it is not clear if there are many skilled well-paying jobs out there. By that I mean that I am concerned that we have outsourced too many of these sorts of jobs to make a vocational school model work (I have no evidence one way or the other, but it seems like this could be an issue).

By: melindalucampbell

melindalucampbell — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:18:22 +0000

Dwight, I concur with your comment that one reason for the apparent failure of American education is “an anti-intellectual environment that views education as a meal ticket rather than something intrinsically valuable.” This seems to be a better explanation of why many of the students who end up in my classes (and I am not necessarily singling out Mesa here) are rather poor students who enter a college class with academic abilities equivalent to a 6th- or 7th-grade student. They have engaged with the curriculum of their previous courses only to the extent that they needed to do in order to pass the course. There is no real lust for knowledge, no desire to know what others have said and thought about, no thrill in contemplating what brilliant minds have achieved–not unless there is some “prize in the package”–a degree that will help them make more money or get a nod of respect from their friends and family. I am acutely aware of this when I am teaching: There I am, working hard to explain difficult or abstract (but interesting!) material, performing like some trained animal, jumping through hoops held higher and higher in the attempt to come up with creative examples and analogies that make complicated ideas simpler, and all the while the students are sitting there, bored or agitated, looking at the clock, glancing at their cell phones or text-messaging under the desk (OK, maybe there are one or two engaged students sitting in front, hanging on my every word) until I say, “and THIS WILL BE ON THE TEST!” Suddenly everyone is interested, jotting down notes, asking questions. I have to bribe my students with extra-credit points to do things, such as attending relevant lectures, that they should want to do on their own. If I say I will give an extra-credit point for asking an interesting question in class, students who would otherwise remain silent are now waving their hands to be called on. My question is, how can we get students to care about something that is not a “meal ticket,” a “prize,” or an immediate source of sensory pleasure? Maybe Plato was right; not everyone belongs in the “academy”: Vocational schools may just be the correct path for the future.

By: Ian Duckles

Ian Duckles — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:41:35 +0000

No discussion of educational reform can be complete without taking note of who stands to profit from various educational reform policies. I particularly like to see how well the Bush family did under the NCLB legislation.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1022-02.htm