{"id":9892,"date":"2017-09-03T01:11:12","date_gmt":"2017-09-03T01:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=9892"},"modified":"2017-09-04T01:12:34","modified_gmt":"2017-09-04T01:12:34","slug":"education-isnt-a-commodity-for-labor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/education-isnt-a-commodity-for-labor\/","title":{"rendered":"Education isn’t a commodity for labor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steven Fesmire<\/a>, Middlebury College<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

When it comes to current debates in politics and policy, even a strident defense of the liberal arts \u2013 such as George Anders\u2019s \u201cYou Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a \u2018Useless\u2019 Liberal Arts Education<\/a>\u201d or Randall Stross\u2019s \u201cA Practical Education: Why Liberal Arts Majors Make Great Employees<\/a>\u201d \u2013 tends to accept that gainful employment is the chief aim of education. <\/p>\n

As a specialist in the 20th-century philosopher and educator John Dewey<\/a>, I\u2019ve been watching these debates with interest. The most-cited academic philosopher<\/a> of the 20th century, Dewey made, arguably, the past century\u2019s most significant contributions to the development of educational thinking. Among other things, he influentially criticized education conceived as \u201cmere preparation for later life<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking back to Dewey raises pertinent questions about education\u2019s fundamental mission today. Is the principal aim of education to provide a padded yoke for the state\u2019s preexisting workforce? Or is it, all things considered, to improve our lives?<\/p>\n

The purpose of education<\/h2>\n

In the 19th century, women\u2019s rights advocate Margaret Fuller admonished the practice of educating girls just to be wives and mothers<\/a>. \u201cA being of infinite scope,\u201d she wrote, \u201cmust not be treated with an exclusive view to any one relation. Give the soul free course\u2026 and the being will be fit for any and every relation to which it may be called.\u201d<\/p>\n

In my view, educational policy in the United States today is entangled in a practice as constrictive as the one Fuller criticized more than 150 years ago. For many, the mission of K-12 and higher education is, in Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker\u2019s infamous words, \u201cto develop human resources to meet the state\u2019s workforce needs<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever one may think of Walker\u2019s politics, his general outlook is no outlier. It typifies the view that education is mostly a way to fuel industry with skilled labor \u2013 and it\u2019s in tension with the goal of preparing students for \u201cany and every relation to which [they] may be called.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than educating whole persons for lifelong growth, this \u201cindustrial model\u201d treats education as just another sector of the economy<\/a>. In this view, education\u2019s job is to manufacture skilled labor, and it\u2019s expected to do so in a way that\u2019s maximally efficient. Knowledge is seen as a market commodity, teachers and professors are delivery vehicles for knowledge content and students are either consumers or manufactured products.<\/p>\n

Educational institutions that follow the industrial model are seen as marketplaces for acquiring and delivering content. And when tuition is involved, that\u2019s simply the fair price for accessing that content.<\/p>\n

What does society lose?<\/h2>\n

When described in this way, it seems a cold, inhuman approach to education. Nevertheless, both major U.S. political parties seem to have embraced the industrial model. The parties may substantively disagree on the particulars of how to provide education, but (in the main) noneconomic values<\/a> are too often not on the radar. <\/p>\n

I contend that something is indeed lost when we treat education as nothing but a sector of the industrial economy. <\/p>\n

First, the industrial model deepens our social problems.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that many specific goals of education are, and should be, defined by our economic infrastructure \u2013 such as the demand for a curricular emphasis on STEM. But that doesn\u2019t mean that our primary educational aim must revolve around this. Training students exclusively to fit existing specifications not only stifles imagination and innovation, but also directs students down the very channels that are implicated in our social, economic, environmental and geopolitical problems. I believe this sacrifices our best hope for making things better.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n Philosopher John Dewey believed that students who were trained to be fed into an existing structure wouldn\u2019t help that structure evolve.<\/span>
\n Library of Congress<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And so we come to John Dewey. As a child, he regularly did chores on his grandfather\u2019s farm outside Burlington, Vermont. He later lamented that such productive occupational supplements to formal education were mostly eclipsed by urbanization and mechanization. He sought ways to bring practical life into the classroom so that schooling could speak to living. <\/p>\n

But there is an important distinction to be made. In one approach, you may infuse education with content that speaks to potential careers \u2013 so-called \u201creal life.\u201d On the other hand, you might allow the existing economic infrastructure to be the singular driving force behind educational practice. The latter, in the words of Dewey<\/a>, turns students and teachers into \u201cinstrument[s] in accomplishing the feudal dogma of social predestination.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former is what most educators themselves hope for: students who become participants in the intelligent redirection of society.<\/p>\n

Cultures of imagination, growth and fulfillment<\/h2>\n

Not only does the industrial model of education dampen intelligent social action, but it also sacrifices personal enrichment.<\/p>\n

An educational institution is capable of training more students with fewer or lower-paid teachers or professors \u2013 just as an industrial sector can produce more clothes, cars or animal protein to meet market demands with lower overhead costs. These products can then be purchased at a relatively low price and used for, or put to work to produce, more things.<\/p>\n

But what else do we unintentionally produce when education \u2013 or industry, for that matter \u2013 is made \u201cefficient\u201d in this way? For instance, do we make narrower lives? Do we, in Dewey\u2019s words, make life more \u201ccongested, hurried, confused, and extravagant<\/a>\u201d?<\/p>\n

As seen through a narrowly utilitarian-industrial lens, it\u2019s simply not clear how education might address personal growth, community and quality of life. If unaddressed, I believe we risk marginalizing these aspects of individual enrichment.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Education is about more than churning out worker bees. Personal enrichment is a vital component as well.<\/span>
\n Stephanie<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Democracy and education<\/h2>\n

Democracy<\/a>, Dewey urged, is not a static inheritance that we can simply live off of, but an ideal that every generation must re-achieve through active effort. Schools are our chief cultural means for educating free citizens who can intelligently and creatively participate in this effort. Education is how we invest in the future of our democracy.<\/p>\n

Under today\u2019s economic and social conditions, what does it mean if \u201ceducation for the state\u2019s workforce\u201d is the chief mission of schools? Does it sacrifice the quality of a student\u2019s present life for the sake of a promised good? Does it support a frozen system of privilege, frantic and unsustainable consumption and deadening efficiency? <\/p>\n

\"TheDewey argued, in opposition, that everyone should have the ongoing opportunity for a critically reflective and occupation-rich education that emphasizes growth, emotional development, imaginative engagement, aesthetic vitality, social responsibility and care. From K-12 to university, such an education can help to establish conditions for personal enrichment, critical inquiry and democratic participation.<\/p>\n

Steven Fesmire<\/a>, Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Middlebury College<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steven Fesmire, Middlebury College When it comes to current debates in politics and policy, even a strident defense of the liberal arts \u2013 such as George Anders\u2019s \u201cYou Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a \u2018Useless\u2019 Liberal Arts Education\u201d or Randall Stross\u2019s \u201cA Practical Education: Why Liberal Arts Majors Make Great Employees\u201d \u2013 tends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":9894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[292],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9892"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9892"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9895,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9892\/revisions\/9895"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}