Raising a Manufacturing Class in a Knowledge Worker World

David has a great post about what is NOT happening in even the Very Good public schools of the Northeast: Seeking, Learning, Adapting, Thinking, Multi-tasking. Instead, the same type of education that was so effective in creating an industrial-age workforce is being shoved down our kids' throats. Even in high school, where David's son is memorizing state capitals. Wow. That will help on the line at GM. If there IS a line at GM on this side of the world when David's son graduates.

The amount of time our son is being required to spend memorizing whether Bismarck is the capital of North or South Dakota will dwarf the total amount of time he would spend in his lifteime looking it up at Google. This is information that adds nothing to this comprehension of the world. Memorizing the dates of the states' admissions to the union might at least sometime in his life help him notice a relationship of some consequence — that Texas was admitted before the abolition of slavery has some possible effect on his understanding, whereas that Austin is the capital will only matter if he runs for governor of Texas and doesn't want to look foolish in the debates.

There is a real opportunity for new media thinking to start embedding itself in public school education. But if you think corporations are closed and risk averse, try talking to the administration at your kids' school.

David ends with an "arrrrrgh". I concur. But what can we do to move schools from the purpose they were built for (to create factory workers) to enablers of the connected world?

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technorati tags: david weinberger, public schools, U.S. Education, Manufacturing, Knowledge Workers, inept, depressing, frustrating, join the army or hit the line, UAW, Freelancers Union

a blogger in our midst?

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Check out the dude's post what added the subtitles south africa the iraq such as to Miss South Carolina's "answer". Good post on anti-art.

At first glance, it may appear that all I did was rip someone else's video off and add sub-titles. But as I see it, I saw a lack in the "original" and took the initiative to fix its shortcomings and in the process created a more valuable video. At least now, you can understand what she says. I guess instead of being a producer on this one, I was a re-producer. I'm sure there's a real discussion on art history's evolution in there somewhere. Could we say the mash-up is the new Dada? They do seem to be founded on the same principles. Rejecting the prevailing standards, enhancing the mundane and effectively creating "anti-art".

Tom Matrullo and the New Macros

Tom does the New Math with JSTOR.

Comment: Fourteen dollars for a superannuated scholarly article - or even a brand new one - seems excessive. The internet holds multitudes, and lends itself to micropayments. E.g.: Let's say a library pays $10,000 for a year's subscription to a substantial collection of old journals -- perhaps a few million pages worth. Let's say two million pages, though it could well be more. That comes to $.0005 per page. And that gives hundreds, or thousands, of students and professors unlimited access to the journals. So, why not offer a pay-per-view model that charges individuals $.0005 per page? Granted, single downloads would not add up to much, but over time, as people became aware of the quality, scope and depth of the scholarship, volume would build. I'm not aware that JSTOR would be risking anything here, since its current subscription model would still be intact - there would just be more revenue, to allocate however it might choose. A win-win. (Update: Micro is the new macro)

Smart people are worth listening to.

YouLementary

The problem with the YouNiversity concept -- which may come to pass in spite of what the American education system does to derail it -- is that it rests at the end of a road that is completely diabled from getting young people from one end to the other.

In other words, while higher education is working to prepare graudates for a networked world, the entire public school system in America is designed to produce factory workers and soldiers. Independent thinking is not only not valued, it's punished. Extrapolation is not only discouraged, it loses you "Thumbs Up Bucks" for candy at the end of the week. Community and marketplace-based social activity isn't just scorned-it's disbanded. Computers are novelties that still sit in libraries and labs for specific uses and county- and state-based curricula-related activites. No Internet without a Capital-P Password.

The public school system is completely dis-preparing and subverting students' neo-natural inclination to tap into the connected world. With a whole lot of rhetoric around 'keeping kids safe,' they're keeping kids hostage to 'education as usual.'

Sure, kids like mine have computers at home, are encouraged to surf and to blog under watchful parental eyes, have their own domains, and want to sell art online. But in some homes that's just not possible for so many reasons. The schools could step up here. Could be the intermediary between young minds, the creative spirit, and the YouNiversity of the future.

But they won't. That path will be available to parents who choose to and can pay $10K or more per year -- and then still have to fight to push teachers out of their comfort zones -- as the disparity between publicly educated and privately educated kids grows in this country.

The hope is in Jenkin's description of matriculating students from YouNiversity out into jobs in elementary and secondary education -- or at least in the knowledge he hopes will leak back into traditional education:

Responding to these wildly divergent backgrounds and expectations requires us to constantly redesign and create course expectations as we try to give students what they need to push themselves to the next level of personal and professional development. We have encouraged faculty members to incorporate production opportunities in their courses so that students in a children's-media class, for example, are asked to apply the theories they have learned to the design of an artifact for a child (medium unspecified), then write a paper explaining the assumptions behind their design choices. We may have students composing their own children's books, building and programming their own interactive toys, shooting photo essays, producing pilots for children's shows, or designing simple video games or Web sites.

I mean I hope all of this makes a difference, one day, maybe even for my kid. I SO hope so. I hope that we prepare Jenna to be a YouNiversity student ready to embrace and "snowboard" on the possibilities of the net.

But for academia as a whole? I'm not so optimistic. And for the American education system? I'm downright terrified.