A new concept emerging in many communities is the idea that the primary goal of education is to produce better workers. Our schools should support our economy. As might be expected, the people advocating such an approach tend to be employers.
This idea does not hold up well to scrutiny. First, What job? A slide show currently making the Internet rounds talks about global competition, and makes the point that by mid-career, the average employee will hold over ten jobs. So which of these should we target? And is there any way we could train a worker for 20 or more jobs in a career?
Even if we made the poor assumption that we are training our students for just one job, the skill sets necessary for any position will change constantly. This is true for even the least-skilled jobs. Even menial workers will need, more and more, to work with computers, new equipment, and understand the potential liabilities inherent in any work. As the job description enlarges with moving up the organizational lader, the necessary skills accelerate at an ever-increasing rate.\. So even if there were only one career track for each student, we are committing ourselves to enormous, continuous ongoing training costs. That is, if our students are incapable of training themselves. That is our first insight here.
After we consider those problems, we will also have to decide whether each student will become a manager, or an employee? Management necessarily deals with many data from many disciplines, and requires the ability to synthesize the information. Moving down the corporation ladder, skill sets become narrower, less independent, and more focused on rules and details. Look around any corporation, and it becomes quite clear that there was no way to predict who would become a manger, and who would become an employee. So if we train leaders, followers will be poorly trained; and obviously, the reverse is equally true. This gives us a second insight.
Next, why should the average taxpayer dedicate public funds garnered from her private, moderate income to fund the training of workers for industries, most of which earn much more money than the worker? If industry wishes better workers, you and I should not have to bear that cost out of our pockets.
There is a related philosophical problem here. Industry generally insists on a minimalist government, and the freest markets possible. So if industry desires division of business and government, how can we then decide that it is the responsibility of government to underwrite the needs of industry? If business argues that it is more flexible and efficient than government at everything else, then it is disingenuous to now argue that government should train industry's workers. It would seem to be an attempt to shift the cost to the general population, even though it will be less efficient, simply because business interests will bear a much smaller cost. So worker training seems to be at odds with the key concepts of the free market, particularly efficiency and accountability. That clue points more to the problems with motives rather than goals, but it is an important insight nonetheless.
Another consideration is whether the concept of job training is consistent with the needs of the democracy. Police states want job training for the populace-- and nothing else (and more than a few businesses operate like police states). Whether in the state, the workplace, or in the church, dictatorial leaders want no one of independent mind. Police states hardly want challenges to their competence, much less, probity. Autocrats want quiet, unthinking, but efficient workers, who do, and do not ask. Job training as opposed to citizen training is the final insight, and strongly points to the problem of turning our schools into centers of workforce development.
These ideas are inadequate, because in a free democracy, education should not serve worker training. Here in the USA, one of our favorite saws is that it is possible for any young student to be elected President one day. The problem with this argument, is that EVERY student in the USA becomes President. When we cast our ballots, we are all the Chief Executive of the country; so everyone is President.
Historically, this is interesting. Socrates (via Plato) cautioned his pupils of the dangers inherent with democracy, and likened it to allowing everyone access to the ship's wheel (this is where we get the concept of the "ship of state"). Socrates was wrong, of course, and his fear is our triumph. It is through collective decision-making that the advanced countries excel.
This only holds, however, if the citizens are independent-minded equals. In the poor, undereducated nations, democracy dies; it only flourishes where there is a thinking populace who understand the long-term obligations and implications of their choices.
Seeing these things, we can understand that training our children for jobs is not the answer, not at all. Vocational preparation is insufficient for the democracy. Democracy absolutely must have discerning citizens who have a grasp of multiple complex disciplines. As do our neighborhoods, our churches-- and our businesses.
We don't need to train workers. We need to train citizens. We need citizens who understand history, and science, and economics, and diversity of cultures-- particularly as it relates to geopolitics. Currently we are engaged in two wars in the Middle East. Regardless of how each of us may feel about those wars, all parties agree that costly mistakes were made because we did not fully understand the geopolitics of the region. And as the world grows smaller, we are becoming aware of the impossibility of understanding all of it diverse cultures; obviously, we will need to inform ourselves as we go. So we also need citizens, and workers, who continue to learn, and inquire, for their entire lives.
Democracy requires citizens; citizens who are scientists, philosophers, psychologists, economists, administrators, who can put it all together and derive some understanding of the world around us. Will the citizen who can do this also be a strong employee? Yes. And she will be a strong manager, a strong entrepreneur, as well as a strong civic activist, and a vocal and forceful advocate for progress, peace and prosperity. And when the marketplace shifts-- as it is continuously doing, at an ever-accelerating rate-- she will shift with it, because she will understand the fundamental concepts that will allow her to re-employ HERSELF.
And once we have educated the enlightened citizen-worker, she will also work for equally well-educated citizens, those who are mindful and respectful of the critical skills of their employees and their customers. And these enlightened managers will be able to take the input from all of these diverse viewpoints, and synthesize them to create business models that look less and less like the outmoded aristocratic structures of the past, and more and more like the democratic structures of today, and of the future.
We do not need workers, at least not first. We need independent-minded citizens, critical thinkers, fast re-learners: in our community, in our political process, and in our businesses. If we train employees rather than voters, then government and communities will fail, and business will fail with them.
But if we train citizens, all will prosper.
Joseph N. Abraham, MD, is president and founder of booksXYZ.com, The Non-profit Bookstore listing over 2,000,000 books. He is also the author of the book Happiness.
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