Love Your Child. Let Them Know What Education is NOT Before It’s Too Late
Posted: Monday, December 26, 2011
by Jeff Brown
Inner Projection
Most parents and students, society in general, are under the false notion that education is for the kids. It’s all about what’s best for the children. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Regarding primary and secondary education, elementary through high school, it is government mandated--an authoritative command by the government. The government decides what it wants, and we comply without question by sending our kids to school. We even think it’s good for them, that they must learn science, math, and English. To drive this point home, the government in 2006 under George Bush announced the American Competitiveness Initiative--greater funding for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) field education.
Teaching to the limited STEM ideal is also a major inhibitor to ensure our students are ready for today’s global job market. More than ever before because of job market instability, more countries coming online to open markets creating more economic volatility, students must be ready for not only several job changes but career changes as well. And in order to be adaptable, one can not merely obtain data or knowledge and spit it out on cue, but they must learn to think creatively, critically, analytically, to problem solve to create bridges between concern and solution. One cannot develop a nimble, analytical, solution-finding mind by merely taking in knowledge and regurgitating it on cue.
But there’s more.
More and more students are going off to college. Now some 70% of high school grads desire a college degree. If you know anything about supply and demand, you know that as supply goes up price goes down. The more there is of something the less valuable it becomes. Having a college degree is of no great advantage because so many have one. This demand for education has also resulted in grade inflation where an ‘A’ is now a ‘B’ which has gotten us to the point where the masters is the new bachelors. In addition, because of greater demand and other factors, more and more is being written about students not learning, students graduating even with high grade-point averages but they are not learning anything. A 4.0 used to be as rare as sun spots; now it’s about as rare as a presidential candidate without common sense.
This degree glut has resulted in a problem. According to Brian Mackey, national recruitment manager at GEI consultants, since 1992 60% of college graduates are now in positions that the Bureau of Labor Statists considers low skill, positions that do not even require a high school education. For example, 20% of all waiter and waitressing positions that opened since 1992 have been filled by college graduates. Some of this is because of a lack of jobs and / or poor education, but another issue is that students don’t learn the necessary skills and attitudes to not only survive but to thrive in today’s world job market. A degree does not teach self-confidence, networking, entrepreneurship skills, initiative and leadership, imagination, enthusiasm, doing more than asked to do, co-operation, tolerance, concentration and focus, goals and vision, how to think and learn independently, and most general success skills.
More and more employers are complaining about college grads not having the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to be successful in today’s economies, even though colleges swear they are teaching communication and writing skills, critical thinking and complex reasoning. Most U.S. employers who need those good in these skills and abilities are now going to U.S. students with graduate degrees or foreign sources. Why do you think more and more colleges are recruiting foreign students? They know a good potential worker when they see one. Some say American students have gotten too lazy, have too great a sense of entitlement, a greater focus on managing and manipulating their educations than on learning. According to Academically Adrift, Limited Learning on College Campuses (Arum and Roksa), today’s college student studies only twelve hours a week and looks to take classes with under-demanding professors who can also be manipulated for less work and higher grades.
But there’s more.
With the recent economic downturn, the cost of education has seen an annual 5.1% price inflation every year for the last five years while real estate prices have tumbled 26% since their recent peak; the Dow Jones is down 18% since its peak; and oil is down 38%, but education, along with health care, are the only two things that have gone up in price. In the last five years education has risen over 25% with $830 billion now due in student loans. Just like the housing bubble created by the government by using Fannie May and Freddie Mack to provide loans for potential home owners without any validation as to whether they could pay the loans back, the same thing is happening with college loans, creating one of the greatest bubbles in U.S. history, the college bubble. Any student can take out a loan of any size without any verification as to potential for re-payment, what their major is, if they will have a job while in college, even what their grades were in high school to provide even a vague notion as to the student’s ability to pay back the loan.
And colleges themselves continue to rack up the debt and spend unwisely. Government subsidy via easily obtained student loans creates excessive cost. Without it, if colleges operated in a true free market competing with each other for students, the cost of college would go down and quality up as more economically viable ways to educate students are found. By providing too many guaranteed students loans the government has stifled competition ending up with poor quality education and poor service. Just image the DMV, US Post Office, or INS and you’ll know what I mean. Colleges have also spent over $10 billion annually to improve campuses simply to attract future parents and students. Little of the construction is critical or necessary and has come in time of great debt and need for expense cuts. During the mid-2000s, I worked at a college that was increasing tuition, cutting part-time instructors, and asking fulltime to retire early while the board of directors gave themselves healthy raises worth thousands of dollars while even more money was spent on unnecessary campus infrastructure upgrades.
Students need to learn some core knowledge, skills, and attitudes that they are not learning in K-college. The degree itself has become an over-priced, all too often unnecessary ticket to jobs that don’t exist and don’t pay enough to negate the massive debt now obtained for a four-year degree. What your child doesn’t know about K-college could result in years if not a lifetime of lost time and money and frustration.
“All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity” James Fennimore Cooper
It’s time to step up and be pro-active about education, career, and life to enable independent, self-learning individuals who can problem solve and create solutions in a time like never before where that type of thinking is not only necessary for the individual but critical for all in a country heading off into dangerous and murky waters.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)My Dear Colleague, as always, this is a "4-eye opener." Other words, we need our eyes plus glasses, and a long supply of knowledge for this one. This article could tap the Washington Post. Thanks again as always. I will definitely share.Thanks Reverend. God bless you and yours during this most holy season. Christ's peace be with you.
Same to you My Dear Colleague.
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