Education for Life

by David Chavern

There was a fascinating piece in the New York Times today about public high school finally waking up to the fact that their graduates leave school without the skills needed to be successful in our economy.    It is about 20 years too late, but at least someone in the public education environment is acknowledging that there is a connection between public secondary education and our economy – and that there is a core obligation on the part of schools to give students the skills they need to obtain – and keep – meaningful employment.

The thrust of the article is about pushing many more kids to go to four-year colleges.  That is certainly part of the solution, but there are others.  We could start by increasing the rigor of public high schools and injecting value, again, in a high school diploma.  We then also need to expand other post-secondary opportunities for gaining needed skills.  (Community and vocational colleges have historically been the one segment of the American educational system that actually cared about what skills local employers look for.)

I am not one to dump all of the responsibility on teachers or school systems.  Parents – and the kids themselves – have to care about education more than anyone.  The days when a strong back and a willingness to work would give you a stable middle-class lifestyle have been over for a long, long time.  People who aren’t highly proficient in English and Math will not have a place in our future economy -- full stop.  That isn’t “elitist” or “exclusionary” or anything other than the truth.  We all have to absorb that fact and make the hard personal and policy choices that are needed to prevent the creation (or, maybe, expansion) of a permanent underclass of people who have not been given the skills they need to “pursue happiness” in this country.

Comments

[Kathy Taylor, Aspire Leadership Consulting Services, LLC]

Education for Life !

What a great segway to Life ! Education includes a process that includes learning of various types and learning of various things. This learning occurs in the early stages of human development. Learning takes place through out life. The good thing is that learning has elevated itself and has allowed us to prosper with change and technology. The not so good thing is that some of us as leaders have not allowed our minds to keep up with the changes nor "educate up" to the techology. We are spending thought time in seeking ways to "make money" vs seeking methods to create new ways, develop new talent and processes, systematic efforts and technology that support "just in time" quality learning. Our goals should be focused on supporting the economic needs through trained and educated people. Through this, we would then have time to identify those careers that support the changing needs of our economy, train people towards those goals, hire those people and maintain those processes, systems and operation of the people. That in and of itself creates thousands of jobs. We then create new leaders and new followers. We need more than jobs that serve hamburger or lobster, more than jobs that make the beds of the healthy rich and famous. More than jobs that place people out of the office and on the telephone. Some of the real "go getter" learn those skills at home. For whatever reason we have created an illusion that many of our US jobs are hard to learn and hard to earn. Weather changes, money changes, learning changes. Our leaderships perspective of education needs to change; to the pace of doing something that sustains the lives of our people and something that will ride the waves of our economic change. It appears that we like it when the wealthy remain wealthy and the poor remain poor. Granted some will tilt the economic scales of contribution and business. (How many cars and houses do you need?) We get happy when we graduate a few students from high school and they can get minimum wage jobs. However we are not so happy that those jobs do not graduate those students out into the world so that they can support necessities such as 1 apartment, 1 car, bus fare, child care. (Why do we make housing and transporation unaffordable?) Why do we keep on raising the prices of goods and services, but we lower the consumer ability to make a sizable impact? We have made decisions that incent some people to become more active in growing the population vs. growing themselves within the system of education. Who is accountable for the fact that those students who are 18-25 years of age are still at home; or still on the streets with others who temp them with claims to make under the table life decisions for them; while they watch people on TV make money? Of the key political education wise decision makers, who will use your hard earned tax contributions to look deeper into our real challenges in education, see that it starts with the family and not at the bank; provide resources for education in the areas of human and family services as a start; then offer opportunities to those who want clean up their act and become a part of a growing economic recovery; keeping our jobs and business here for our economy, as they pursue education from pre-school, tech school, continuing certifications through grad school?
Our role becomes advocating making the change, as well as making decisions that make the difference. Your thoughts?

[Driving Schools Finder]

Education is very imporatnt for anyone and eveeryone .without peopoer education planning life canot be settled properley