the value prop in everything

So found out about this today and it reminded me of a conversation I was having with Felix a few weeks ago, about how everything does come back down to education - teaching people not what, but how to think, ultimately influencing their mindsets, the decisions they make and where their lives head. Education can and should happen anywhere, and should be a life-long process of learning. Where it can be quite important to people in formative stages of thinking, or at least where it is legal and compulsory, is in the area of formal education and schooling. This is why any news in the area particularly piques my interest.

Probably because I've just emerged from my mental cave of microeconomics from the past week and a half, it is easy to look at what is being suggested and note the economic efficiency. Supply of human capital being trained to equal demand of firms - restoring markets to equilibrium, maximising social welfare, blah blah blah (I am not very good at economics). Quoted from the article, Tony Abbott states that "So many young people get to the end of their time at school wondering what they are going to do for the rest of their lives, what job they are going to do the day after they leave."- and it is true. I am surrounded by friends who are going to graduate at the end of the year with no idea of what they want to do. Should this model be introduced to them, I'm sure many of them will agree in its benefits for the students/future entrants into the job market, thinking about their own painful uncertainties.

But maybe the problem of directionlessness, the anxiety of not knowing where to take their lives, started well beyond approaching the end of their degree - and if done incorrectly, the act of corporate-directed curriculum can perpetuate. What is the heart of the problem here? This is where the beauty of normative questions comes in (cheers again, third year micro), and evaluating the consequences of enforcing/not enforcing certain policies.

At its core, institutionalised education is something I've been invited to think about since my first semester at university, when in one of my subject tutorials, we were asked to look at the traditional objective of university - being a place to inquire and gain knowledge - to the vocationally-biased, degree-producing factories they're becoming today.

From a principle standpoint, having a self-interested third party dictate the direction of what should be an objective field sounds morally wrong. Let's rewind that for a moment - how 'objective' should education be? To avoid going on a tangent, I'll leave the debate of "dictating people's interests and careers vs. following their dreams" on the table in view, but deliberately to the side. Herein comes this idea of what the economy needs, and the proposed solution that we train up our students in these fields.

By no means, and as I believe I've mentioned on this very blog, do I believe that knowledge for the sake of knowledge is particularly useful. Indeed, as the world changes and new challenges arise, the ability to remain responsive to these needs is crucial, so that we may address them effectively.

There is, however, a difference between response and reaction.

What worries me about this plan is the way in which it could potentially be executed with the mindsets of the parties who would be implementing it. Therein lies the problematic nature of corporates shaping the curriculum; that the needs they see and what maximises profits for their company may be irrelevant, at least in how they do things, in the future. Very targeted and focused classes that fit into the package of"Skills a ___ Will Need 101", have the danger that lies in graduates attempting to enter the workforce after their very specific education, only to find that everything they've learnt is obsolete.

Instead, the kind of broad base in critical thinking and analysis, qualitative as well as quantitative skills is one I believe is best in schools. Teach fundamental courses which will help them build foundations - literacy, science, mathematics, philosophy - but always link it back to why they matter - not complete pictures, but just some possibilities, and their relevance might not always be as obvious as you think.

How many times has a student, whether someone else or even yourself, looked at their literature essay, their quadratic equations, molecular structures and asked, "what is even the point?" If I appreciated science the way I do now as a method for understanding the world and the objective truths it reveals, it would've made VCE Chemistry a hell of a lot easier to get through. It's lucky that I've always liked maths, but if someone passionate about resource allocation problems we face in the world and looked straight to economics for it, it would've been a lot more meaningful to know that every calculus class they sat through in school would help them understand the economic phenomena that surround them. Most importantly, beyond moving from the "What's the point of studying maths? I don't want to be a mathematician" type of attitude, it's not just about relating those disciplines to what you want to do later in life, but understanding that being trained to think so broadly will benefit you no matter what you do, to at the very least, know what's going on in the world around you, or have some clue as to how to interpret and analyse it.

If someone gave me those value propositions back in school, I know I could have made a lot more out of everything I studied, not just what I happened to be interested in. Maybe it's just because I thrive off knowing concrete examples, but in a society where we produce so many individuals with no idea of where to go, maybe it is something that we can benefit from as a whole.

What does give me a glimmer of hope in the model being proposed are that the future demands of the economy - big data, information technology, engineering and the like - are by nature more innovation-oriented, and therefore less attached to any traditional methods or mechanisms of doing things. Perhaps we could do with putting some faith into these corporates that they have a strong vision for how their field caters for society - instead of just hissing and bringing out the pitchforks at the first thought of "commercialisation". Maybe we'll see strong displays of leadership where the multidisciplinary approach to education is one endorsed by these technical fields.

Until we see some more concrete plans, however, my concerns remain.

en garde

"I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being--forgive me--rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger.”

The smarter the people are, the more confident they'll sound talking about things they know jack shit about. Smart, not wise - if they are wise, you will hear admittance, humility and openness at every step of decision-making.

It is not (usually) the intent of the former to possess attitudes as dangerous as theirs, but those around them who care would do well to remind them of it.