When values aren't valuable

When we look at the development of, say, the United States (though just about any Western liberal democracy ... as some like characterize them ... would do), we realize that, once again, we're going through a period of real turmoil: income disparity is reaching critical proportions, the middle-class is being seriously squeezed, debt is rampant, crime rates are decreasing while overall violence is increasing, a lot of young people (worldwide) are expressing their dissatisfaction in the streets. As Dylan noted, "Something is happening, and you don't know what it is./Do you, Mr. Jones?"

It would seem that, once again, history is repeating itself. This isn't the first time that there's been a lot of societal turmoil related to wealth inequity (to put it in more formal terms). In fact, Perkin (The Third Revolution) maintains that every great civilization in the history of the world has collapsed when the wealth disparity became unbearable. No Diamond's-Guns-Germs-and-Steel, just simple too few haves, too many have-nots. This isn't an argument we can simply slough off. We need to take this one seriously.

I have tried to make clear that education cannot be the solution to our current dilemma. It's probably the root cause. The collusion of industry and education is not a good thing, because industry is over-represented by wealth. Over 80% of all stocks are held by the wealthiest 10% of Americans, for example. The wealthy elite send their kids to elite schools so that they retain their elite status. The vast, vast majority of schools and colleges are there to merely prepare drones for work in the wealthy's hive. So we buy into the myth that a college education is necessary, but college educations have become mass produced, and more than anything else, they have become so expensive that without a huge amount of debt, you can't even get one anymore. The average American (and increasingly worldwide) student owes so much money when s/he gets his or her sheepskin that they can't afford (literally) to say "no" to any employment that comes along. The more this is the case, the more wages are depressed (this is simple economics), the more difficult it is to pay it all back. In other words, you may be out of college, you may have a degree, but the bank still owns you, and the banks, just like the companies you will most likely end up working for, are owned by the same people who aren't all that interested in you having very much to say about anything.

So, am I saying that we should boycott education, that we shouldn't educate our young? No, not at all. What I'm saying is that we can no longer allow the current system of education to continue. What I'm saying is that we just can't continue schooling our children as we always have, we actually need to educate them, and this might just have to happen outside the current system.

Hmmm, I'm guessing that's too much for some of you.

Even more concerns about the future

Yes, yes, yes, I've been thinking a lot about the future lately. The more I think about it, though, the less likely it seems that there will be much of one. I know that sounds pessimistic and cynical, but it's not really meant as such. It's really a mere straightforward observation. The powers-that-be -- regardless of who you might think that is -- aren't really all that interested in you. They're certainly not interested in your kids or grandkids or nieces and nephews, or anybody other than themselves, and maybe their own.

A few posts ago, I mentioned that the end of education, as it appeared in the Late Enlightenment and Early Industrial Age, was an educated public that was crucial to the success of a functioning democracy. Actually, that's not true at all. I know, that's the accepted wisdom and all, but when we take a serious, critical look at history, we find that deep down, education has always been more about upholding the reigning interests of the time. Do we really believe that with the rise of the nation-state after the Treaty of Westphalia that all those monarchs who founded universities were interested in an enlightened populace? Not really. They were looking for bureaucrats and managers to run their ever expanding realms of influence and power. Even in America where we avoided the hereditary aristocracy ... well, at least until the fabulously wealthy started passing on their wealth to subsequent generations, then it became hereditary after all ... the idea was to school and socialize the populace to become conformists, upholders of the status-quo.

Fichte, the German philosopher who really jump-started mass education, did so in order that "Germans would become better Germans". You only need one day in any American public (or private) school to know that the primary aim of American mass education is to ensure that "Americans become better Americans". What we need to ask ourselves is what "better" means in these contexts. I'm not saying that there is anything fundamentally or inherently wrong with the status-quo values that are the primary object of education, but I am questioning the wisdom of indoctrination and suppression of critical thinking. You can't have both.

I don't know why we're so afraid of those who think critically. If the values you uphold are truly worthwhile, wouldn't they stand up under critical scrutiny? One would think so, but we find out that more often than not, the values being propagated are very good for some, and not so good or downright harmful to others. That's the problem. It's becoming clear that what is being said is policy is not really what is policy.

More and more people are starting to see the cracks in the facade.

More concerns about the future

Since I was going on about not-having-to-be-a-genius last time, I think I should just pick up here where I left off. If the system we have is not going to work in the future (and it isn't going to), then we need to think seriously about what we have to do so that we don't screw our children over. Unfortunately, too many of us have bought into the capitalist lie: there isn't enough to go around, because as one wise person once noted, if all the rich people sat down to divide up all the wealth, there wouldn't be enough to go around. There's always someone who thinks they are entitled (and it's at the top that true entitlements are believed in) to more than everyone else.

Oh, and by the way, for all of you who are thinking this really isn't your problem ... because you don't have kids or disowned your kids, or just because you don't like thinking anymore, or whatever, I just want you to know that you're the biggest problem of all. And that's all I have to say about that.

Just like I have shown that our most fundamental concept of education is no longer applicable to the reality with which we are confronted, it should be increasingly clear that our entire notion of economics isn't really all that sustainable. Education as we know it, no longer applies. Economics as we envision it, no longer applies. For the quick-witted amongst you, yes, politics as we know it is also so dysfunctional that it's only a matter of time until it collapses.

Such events are threats as well as opportunities, of course. Any collapse can be utterly destructive, but any time one thing outlives its usefulness, an alternative has the opportunity to establish itself. The question is whether we're satisfied with how power and wealth is determined, seen, acknowledged, and, yes, distributed.

I really don't know if any of this is really sinking in, but it should be slowly obvious to the most casual observer that the way things are are not the way they can remain. Things are changing, whether we like it or not, and they are going to change in ways that we may or may not like, but for all of you who think I've got mine, let the others fend for themselves, well, I'm afraid you may be in for a rude awakening. Oh, I'm not talking about some bottom-up revolution and guillotines or anything. No, not at all. For all of you who think you've got yours and you're secure: you're not. And it's not that have-nots that are going to destroy you, it's the haves. They haven't got it all yet and they are not going to stop till they get it all ... including whatever you think is yours. I don't want to reveal the end of the story, rather, I feel simply obligated to tell you what's written on the wall over there.

Concerns about the future

For those of you who have been following the last few posts, it will be clear by now (I hope) that we're all debating and talking about one thing when it's really about something else. So what else is new? This happens a lot these days.

The response to the so-called, alleged skills shortage is not more education and training, there are more than enough unemployed, skilled, and capable potential employees out there, but if you, as a company, are not willing to pay them a livable wage to do the work, you shouldn't be surprised when they don't want to work for you. The response to still not finding "qualified employees" is not allowing extra-cheap labor in from foreign shores. That simply undercuts the home market and exacerbates the problem. The real problem is that there are simply not enough jobs to go around, any way you cut it. We have high unemployment primarily because there are not enough jobs to go around. If so many -- particularly transnational corporations (TNCs) -- are making record profits, the lack of skilled labor can't be the real issue anyway. Something else is going on.

There is an old adage in the IT community, namely if a computer can do it, eventually it will. If whatever it is you do -- bookkeeping, quality control, information dissemination ... it doesn't really matter -- can possibly be so organized and programmed that a machine (or computer/software) can do it, eventually, it will be. There are lots of things that computers are doing instead of people, be it taking orders on Amazon or any other online marketplace or calculating and preparing your tax return. The more the machines can do, the more we will let them do ... no, encourage, no, insist, they do. Why? Primarily because we trust machines more than people, and deep down, we have a very ambivalent attitude toward them (cf. my "Prometheus" series on Daily Kos).

The consequence of this thought is simple: we may have a declining absolute population, but we have a more rapidly declining number of employment slots to go around. This is the real problem. We're not ready for this at all. And, the main reason we're not is because we refuse to admit that this is really the problem.

This isn't just a young-people problem. For those of us who are coming into our so-called "golden years", most of us live under the delusion that we paid into the system, therefore we are simply cashing in on our investment. Unfortunately, that's not how the social-security systems in the Western world work. No, those who are working pay for those who are no longer in the pool. We paid for our parents, our children have to pay for us, our grandchildren for our children. With a declining population, however, it doesn't take a mathematical genius to recognize that at some point (and it's not all that far away) that those working can't possibly pay for those who have stopped.

It's not a matter of a bankrupt system, rather it is a simple matter of numbers and how the system functions. It also doesn't take a genius to figure out that the chances that any of our children will ever see a penny of "retirement" are somewhere between slim and none. Oh yeah, we love our children, but we screwed them over anyway. There is a big downside to boomer selfishness, it would seem.

Concerns about the end of education

This is a time of ends. For years we've been talking about the end of just about everything, but the word itself has two very distinct meanings, and which one is meant in any given phrase in which it is used. Ah yes, there's always a bit of twist in just about everything we say and do.

The word "end" has to primary meanings, namely the stopping point of a temporal experience or event (as in Judgment Day is what many believe will be the end of the world.), or the goal or purpose of something (as in The ends should justify the means.) So, which one am I talking about here? And is so often the case, the answer is, "well, both, sort of."

If a person can learn things, acquire skills and develop competences without having to go through a formal process to do so; if a person will most like do these things more often than not outside of formal educational systems or processes, the we have to ask ourselves just what good is a school, in this case a vocational-training institution? Are they needed at all? If a person can get recognition elsewhere for what s/he can do or is capable of, then it doesn't take much more thinking to realize that the school, as we generally understand it, becomes rather superfluous rather quickly. In a sense, then, this is the end of education (in the first sense of the word).

Of course, if this is the end of the institution, then we have to ask ourselves if the institution serves any purpose, any end (in the second sense of the word), if it has any reason for existing at all. We would be justified, it would seem, in raising the question of the real end of education, as we now understand it. If I can get what I need elsewhere, why do I have to support a large apparatus that is providing no real value? This is a legitimate (though short-sighted question) and it is one which an increasing number of people are thinking maybe we don't.

The Late Enlightenment and Early Industrial Age thought that an educated public was crucial to the success of a functioning democracy. Citizens who could read newspapers, think for themselves, form opinions and express them were considered a necessary, if sometimes uncomfortable, element of a democratic society. It was generally agreed that each and every person should have the opportunity to learn to read, write, and reckon (the 3 R's), and it later turned out that having a basic understanding of literature, science and mathematics would help everyone get along better in the modern world. In other words, society decided that everyone would be better off if everyone knew more. The school of the Late Enlightenment, of course, looked very different from the school of the Industrial Age, and with the current rapid development of technology, especially information technology, we realize that our current notion of school may be at its end, because the end it has to serve needs to be redefined.

What we have seen in the last few posts is that there is shift of thinking taking place from the "old style", (for us) traditional forms of education which was input oriented (e.g. subject-centered ... so many hours of math, science, literature, phys. ed., etc.) to one that is output oriented. This reorientation brings with it the obsolesence of large portions of the education undertaking, and it is time for us to start thinking about what the education for tomorrow should look like. It should also be clear by now, that the mere requirements of business, the demands of capital, the specifications of employers cannot be the answer: too much of what they want can be gotten outside the structure of formal education. But, if we are to preserve our societies, then we need to think hard about what education means and what it will look like in the future.

I hate to say it so tritely, but our entire future depends on it.

More concerns about non-formal and informal learning

Our little exercise from last time brought up a point that many of you had probably not thought of before: experience. Just how much of what you do are you able to do simply because you have gathered enough experience to do it well (or even, to do it at all)? I think we all agree on the answer: a lot.

All of us have had that experience of sitting in a classroom and suddenly realizing that what the teacher is talking about is actually the solution to another problem that has been plaguing you: maybe it was how to deal with your girl/boy friend while in literature class, maybe it was some insight to your hobby that appeared in science class. It doesn't matter, but all of us have had the experience of being in a learning situation (classroom, lab, etc.) and learning something that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual subject at hand. This common experience has a name: non-formal learning. A lot of our learning happens this way.

Even more learning occurs outside the classroom, in the "college of hard-knocks" as the Americans like to call it. This is the real venue for "live and learn". Building a soap-box racer, a model rocket, sewing clothes for a doll, building a float for the homecoming parade ... the list is endless: no matter what we do, as humans, we learn something just from doing it. We have all kinds of useful knowledge, not so useful knowledge (e.g. trivia), handy skills, and the ability to do something that others you know can't do, and all of this has come from the fact that you have survived as long as you have. Imagine now, you could get some kind of "school credit" for that. This is what is known in the (education) trade as "informal learning".

Common sense tells us that a lot of what we know and are capable of doing has come from activities that weren't necessarily intended to achieve those results. If it were possible to somehow "document" that learning, then there would be a whole lot more we could put on our resumes that might be applicable to the job we are seeking. Given the fact that talk's cheap and too many people are simply willing to lie to get what they want, having these knowledge, skills, and abilities documented by a competent authority, that is, officially, would solve that problem. This is what we also know in the trade as "accreditation of prior learning" (APL). And this is a program that the European Commission has been rightfully pursuing as well.

Yes, the two ideas I've been talking about in the last two posts constitute what could be called a "revolution" in education and training. What?! A revolution! Yes. For as harmless as they appear, these two concepts have the potential to change the (education) world as we know it. Why? For the simple reason that I mentioned at the beginning of these ponderings from Prague: they appear like good ideas on the surface ... but think them through to the end.

That's where we are headed next time.

Concerning non-formal and informal learning

My friend's misadventure with the semiconductor company took place a while ago, which only indicates to me that this is a problem that's been around for quite some time. Naturally, he ended up taking a very different career path, and though he was very fortunate in how his life progressed, others have been just as unfortunate in what came after such an experience. Not everyone is as lucky as everyone else, and we have a responsibility to think about them.

Someone has been ... in fact, a lot of people have been, and as a result, two key concepts have taken on a very deep significance in European education policy: learning outcomes and accreditation of prior learning (which I'll call APL for short; it goes under a variety of names, but this one is as easy as any to recognize).

The traditional approach to education has been, whether you were aware of it or not, input-driven, and content-centered. We all went to school to learn those things that someone somewhere at some time decided were necessary for us to learn. Nobody ever asked any of us if we wanted to take physics or college algebra or world lit. We did it because it was on the schedule. End of story. That sums up, by the way, the education of 99% of all the people who have ever gone to school even a day in their lives.

Whether justified or not, the EU educational-policy people took industry seriously and said to themselves, "Well, if that's what the prospective employee is supposed to look like in the end, then let's focus on the outcomes and redesign our curriculum and training programs to ensure that this is what comes out in the end." They turned the whole process around and started working from the outcomes, back to what a learner would have to know, do and how well in order to perform as expected. It all seemed so innocent in the beginning, for the simple reason that it makes so much sense.

Believe me, this has kept training people and educators busy for years. When you think how old most of our school systems are and how long they have been input-oriented, well, you can easily imagine how hard it is to break hundred-years' old habits. Only now (and I've been involved in this for over a decade) are we starting to see some headway. It's not easy, believe me. In fact, try this little exercise to get an idea of what we are dealing with:

Think about the job you do: what would one have to learn/study to do your job? what knowledge (general and specific) is required? which skills are essential? which competences are required? And, once you have that sorted out in your mind, imagine what it would mean to document that so that anyone anywhere, if s/he followed that program of learning/training would be able to replace you. Right. It's not an easy task, but that's what an outcome-oriented approach attempts to do.

Next time, we'll take this a step further.

Concerning education (and training)

It would seem that a sound part of current educational policy, then, is what we call "employability". Anyone who knows me knows as well that I'm a staunch opponent of the concept (cf. here, here, here, here, here, and here). Letting industry into education, be it general, vocational or higher, is like inviting the fox to guard the hen house. It will simply be bloody in the end. Considering what is happening to labor worldwide, I don't think it's too radical to accuse them of wanting little more than obedient wage-slaves. (There are exceptions, I am sure, but I don't care at the moment: if there are, they are too few; if there are more than I think, they're not making themselves visible enough.) It cannot be that we -- who are supposed to know something about education and training -- simply roll over and let the least qualified among us (let's be truthful: what qualifies an employer in regard to the needs of education?) tell us what needs to be done. Well, that's really what industry thinks, and oddly enough, that's pretty much what education and politics are doing.

We saw last time that the so-called skills shortage is little more than a red herring. There are, I would bet, more than enough qualified people to fill all those allegedly unfilled jobs. So what's the problem? Well, if industry can't snow us with the unrealistic-compensation-expectations argument, they can always fall back on the doesn't-have-the-right-piece-of-paper argument. I'm sure many of you have experienced that.

I know a guy who once interviewed with a major semiconductor company, and when I say major, I mean major. He had a degree in chemical engineering from a nationally well-respected university and since semiconductors weren't exactly his thing, he spent a good deal of time prepping for the interview by boning up on semiconductor production. The interview went spectacularly: the interviewer and my friend hit it off from the start; technically, according to the interviewer, my friend was top-shelf, remarking in fact that he'd never met any interviewee who knew as much about semiconductor production as he did. But ... it will come as no surprise ... my buddy didn't get the job. The reason: well, without some kind of documentation ... you know, a course or two in electrical engineering, a minor in computer science, well, something ... he could never justify the hire. So there was my friend with great paper, but not the right paper; in-depth knowledge but not documented knowledge. And, without the paper, no job.

Yes, something is terribly wrong with this picture, but it's anything but an isolated incident, and many, many of you will know for yourselves. So, how do we get past this barrier? We'll look at one possibility next time.

Concerning skills shortages

The EU has set education as an exceptionally high priority. Youth unemployment, particularly in Southern Europe has reached pandemic proportions. It is growing elsewhere. Industry and politics are crying for highly trained, qualified candidates to fill much-needed high-skilled jobs. We're in the midst of a crisis. The problem is, it's not the crisis that politics and industry are wringing their hands about.

You hear similar tones in much of the American political debate, if they can ever get away from defense, healthcare, or gun ownership. Everybody's got their priorities, even if they're all screwed up. Still, we have to ask ourselves what is this crisis all about -- really? If industry's not hiring, it is easy to say they'd love to if they could only find the right people for the job, and politics, believing them, runs off and starts pushing vocational education and training (VET) or higher education, or whoever it is that they think they can push around to solve the problem. The problem is, if there's a problem, it's not that problem, it is another one, and it's a much bigger one, too.

At a recent conference in Brussels, in regard to this crisis only in the IT sector, industry made the case that there were five reasons why they couldn't find qualified personnel. Among the usual suspects of low levels of practical and job-related skills, interpersonal competences and the like, there was #5, which stood out like a sore thumb: unrealistic compensation expectations. Yes, you have to let that roll across the tongue. I'm dying for help, you could help, but you want to be paid too much to do it. That's the nice way to put it. I once learned there was such a thing as supply-and-demand: when supply decreases, demand increases, prices rise. Apparently that does apply in real economies. The solution? Hire Far- and Southern Eastern help at a fraction of the cost. Bingo! Immigration reform is a sudden priority.

If that's not bad enough, it gets worse: even though the so-called "law" of supply-and-demand has been somehow nullified, because even if the domestic candidate is willing to be underpaid for what s/he is going to do, it still isn't low enough to compete. These worthless hand-out-wanters apparently don't know a good deal when they see one. They will have trouble making ends meet on what they earn, they will most likely have to seek some kind of government assistance to help them keep their heads above water, but we've got an unsolvable skills-shortage problem. And industry keeps beating up politics to get them to do something about it. The problem is, the only thing politics can do is flail around, but it's a good distraction from the real machinations of industry which is purely and simply more profit.

No the real problem is not a skills shortage, it's a profit shortage.

But, it gets worse ... more next time.