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Outrages

  

9486 in the collection  

    Deciding education's future

    by Bill Archer

    With emphasis being placed on the workforce needs of a future global economy it remains a primary focus for those shaping the direction of public education to design educational policies and processes that will best meet those needs. The public and its teachers are losing the opportunity to decide how the public education system will be used. It will allow those who believe they stand to benefit the most to decide for them instead.

    Present trends in the federal government favor using the suggestions of those businesses that are projected to be the ones providing the jobs of the future. Businesses of the future could then decide the content of the curricula since students, future employees of those businesses, would need to be trained in order to be prepared for the available jobs offered by the specific businesses.

    The contentious matter of teacher unions could be avoided completely since the public schools would morph into professional business employment training centers. Trainers would take the place of public school teachers who were formerly credentialed by the state's traditional methods. Deposed teachers could apply to become trainers too.

    President Obama's choice of Arne Duncan as secretary of education reveals that he intends for public education to go with the business model in the future. Duncan has already successfully established a system of education in the Chicago school system that relies heavily on those who subscribe to the notion that public schools should serve the needs of the business community.

    Specific training can be arranged for the relative few trainees, (students), who want to specialize in the few technologically skilled jobs that the future may require for which higher pay would be available. Most jobs in the future will remain low skilled, as most are now. The level of energy needed to work those tiresome jobs will remain the same and require no long-term special training for which a higher level of salary and benefits would be warranted.

    Public educators haven't the motivation nor power to wrestle the future course of their profession from those who have felt the clash of market forces and basked in the enormous financial rewards that brought awesome power and influence into their lives. They are not willing to give up a chance to possess and take control of a process that can perpetuate such status.

    BILL ARCHER, Daytona Beach
    =

    — Bill Archer
    Daytona Beach News
    2009-03-22
    http://www.news-journalonline.com/opinion.htm

    INDEX OF OUTRAGES

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