A major transformation in American schooling

[Lafayette]

A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT WAY OF SCHOOLING OUR CHILDREN IN AMERICA

America must confront the challenge of reality. The production of goods is automating workers out of Manufacturing. And the Services Industries are now the major component of our economy. This latter requires absolutely a higher level of general education throughout the country.

Key to what America needs is being demonstrated in Europe. It is real and it is true. (I'm a Yank who has lived in Europe for the past three decades.)

It's damn simple as a basic:
*Education must become the main component of any national and state government. Funds will match efforts by states to implement a decent primary/secondary/tertiary educational program. The results will show in the level of average intelligence demonstrated in multiple exams that the students will be taking in pursuing their education.
*Each state will asses its educational system against a national average and those not "up to speed" will be assisted by means of Federal financial-assistance that guarantees the level of teachers/teaching necessary. But the results must be obvious improvement of test-scores at the primary- and high-school level.
*Access to Post-Secondary Education must be coordinated nationally. That is, typical PSE studies can established by most state-run schools today. It is the atypical type that need specific addressing. There must be a solution for all-students, whether they want to learn how to pursue work-studies (how to drive a bulldozer) or those necessary for a higher level of educational diploma.
*And, given the geographical breath of the US that may require in some states sending students to special schools located not next to their homes.

Where there's the will, there's the way. America's problem is generating the massive will to understand that Manufacturing in America is dead-and-gone. What remains is a mainly services-economy that is more and more technically complex every day. Primary- as well as secondary-schooling must keep up with that complexity!

My point? The world has fundamentally changed and Uncle Sam has not kept up. Particularly because it has no National Schooling Program (pre- and post-secondary) to assure all attain the higher level of education that this Brave New World is requiring ...

It's high-time for a major national renewal in how we educate our children ...

 

[Lafayette]

THE NECESSITY TO OBTAIN POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION

From here: NCES Fast Facts:

What percentage of Americans go to post secondary?

In 2020, about 37.5 percent of the U.S. population who were aged 25 and above had graduated from college or another higher education institution. This is a significant increase from 1960, when only 7.7 percent of the U.S. population had graduated from college. (Jul 29, 2021)

That just aint good-enough. The number should be two-and-a-half times that percentage shown above! (That is, as close to 100% as humanly possible!)

Which would be provided by education of two kinds - "hands-on" and "mental". That 37.5% above is not nearly enough to satisfy demand in an economy that is nowadays basically services-oriented.

From here: Why is the US a service economy?

In the simplest of terms, a service economy is an economy where the primary economic activity is the provision of services rather than the production of goods. The United States pretty much has a service economy because most of the growth of the U.S. economy is tied to services. (Sep 11, 2021)

Note that national statistics are tertiary in nature by nature of the definition of labor in the us. Namely, from here:

The three-sector model in economics divides economies into three sectors of activity: extraction of raw materials (primary), manufacturing (secondary), and service industries which exist to facilitate the transport, distribution and sale of goods produced in the secondary sector (tertiary).

One cannot dispute the above, but I suggest that in terms of the nature of "work" raw-materials are simply an input to the Manufacturing sector. Thus the American economy remains a duality - Manufacturing and Services Sectors.

Getting back to the point I wish to make: We must enhance the Educational Sector to produce a higher-level of "worker ability". Just graduating with a basic-degree throws people onto the unemployment file. Whereas they once found employment in the Manufacturing Sector, they are now qualified to assume basic-work functions (like driving a truck or providing BigMacs). Which are much lower-income oriented with a tendency to be "automated" wherever possible thus destroying "employment".

Our children should be "propelled" from high-school into a post-secondary education. Which will consist of two major sectors, Basic and Advanced:
*With the former being such basic-occupations as farming, construction, baking, mail delivery, etc.
*And the latter, professional-qualifications - such a medicinal, or law, chemical, computing, all of which require higher-level post-secondary educational-specialization that MUST REMAIN AS LOW-COST AS POSSIBLE!

MY POINT:
*We should not decide for students which post-secondary studies they prefer to pursue.
*We should simply make available all possible alternatives, whether basic- or professional-services industries.
*And at a cost that is not preventive. In Europe, it is rare to pay more than $1000 a year to pursue a post-secondary education in a government-funded schooling-institution. And, as in the US, most such universities are government funded "state-schools".
*What is key is that American-students graduate from "post-secondary education" with the education/training that is necessary to find work regardless of its professional-level.

 

[Evilroddy]

@Lafayette

Generally I agree with your analysis, but several comments are also necessary to fully flesh it out.

One: The service industries are now seeing human labour replaced by computer moderated online commerce. Middle management is being replaced by AI driven computational management. These two streams of economic supplanting are accelerating in our economies thus making service oriented work just as unreliable as manufacturing was a generation and a half ago.

Education today must realise the above and aim to create sustained learners who are adaptable and who can constantly self-retrain as employment opportunities change. The idea of a career is fading and a new notion of sequential mini-careers is becoming the norm.

Education must also give learners the capacity to create and run their own small businesses, as that is where our modern economies are headed. This reliance on small businesses will be deeply rooted in exploiting the creative capacities of future small-scale entrepreneurs selling the fruits of their creativity as value-added production.

Two: As goods and services based economic sectors see more and more capital replacement of human labour, the tertiary sector of the economy will have to grow. This is the commerce of ideas and designs rather than goods and services. Education must figure out how to maximise the percentage of the population which can contribute to this ever growing sector so it can absorb as much displaced labour as possible from the contraction goods and services sectors.

Three: The contraction of aggregate labour demand will cause serious labour surpluses. Such surpluses will bid down the value of most types of traditional labour (unskilled and skilled alike) as AI, computers and computer mediated automation replace human labour more and more. So there is a need to develop a parallel "social economy" (a Jeremy Rifkin idea IIRC) to absorb surplus labour ejected from the manufacturing, services, financial and commercial sectors of our present money-economies. That transition could cause a collapse of our societies and possibly even civilisation. Therefore education and learning must first figure out what this new "social economy" will look like and then both educate and train more and more of the population to participate within it.

The transition from a money-based manufacturing, services, commercial and financial economy to a "social merit"-based "social economy" in parallel to that more traditional economy will require students to have the social skills, the positive political activism and the acute analytical/critical thinking skills to bring this transformation from a money-based commercial economy to a merit-based social economy to fruition. So education must find ways to teach students how to change society by peacefully taking power from deeply embedded and powerful interests in order to build a more inclusive social economy to augment and eventually replace the traditional money-based goods and services commercial economy. This must be a non-violent revolution so education must do all it can to give new generations the capacity to transform our existing societies peacefully and effectively into new configurations.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Bear5131]

The problem is the government and the liberal colleges are in bed together

Colleges keep raising their rates and the government has easy loans which some people are retired and still paying off.


Fix that 1st

 

[Lafayette]

@Lafayette

One: The service industries are now seeing human labour replaced by computer moderated online commerce. Middle management is being replaced by AI driven computational management. These two streams of economic supplanting are accelerating in our economies thus making service oriented work just as unreliable as manufacturing was a generation and a half ago.

Not to the extent that you imply. "Services" is the way to go and Uncle Sam must understand that simple rule.

Negate the rule, and you negate any hope whatsoever of Americans leading decent lives.

Education today must realise the above and aim to create sustained learners who are adaptable and who can constantly self-retrain as employment opportunities change. The idea of a career is fading and a new notion of sequential mini-careers is becoming the norm.

Agreed. Any company should have a program of Worker Enhancement that allows them to advance in skills-knowledge. This could mean schooling courses of up to 2/3 months every so often.

No big deal. Eminently doable.

Education must also give learners the capacity to create and run their own small businesses, as that is where our modern economies are headed. This reliance on small businesses will be deeply rooted in exploiting the creative capacities of future small-scale entrepreneurs selling the fruits of their creativity as value-added production.

Education does not give individuals the "capacity to create and run their own businesses " successfully. Key-word, "successfully". It is either innate or not and if not people go work for those companies that have been successful.

The capacity-to-create is innate to humans. We've been doing it a long, long time as history tells us. Whether it is stimulated or not depends upon the individual. No one can make a person do it themselves. And states in both the US and Europe have shown how incompetent they can be when "government" tries to stimulate-that-capacity by funding initiatives.

It's best to let individuals mount their own ideas and see what happens.

Two: As goods and services based economic sectors see more and more capital replacement of human labour, the tertiary sector of the economy will have to grow. This is the commerce of ideas and designs rather than goods and services. Education must figure out how to maximise the percentage of the population which can contribute to this ever growing sector so it can absorb as much displaced labour as possible from the contraction goods and services sectors.

Once again you are asking "Education" to do something it cannot do. Each and every spontaneous "good idea" that works is done by those who are both competent and lucky-that-the-idea-works. This cannot be foretold.

Three: The contraction of aggregate labour demand will cause serious labour surpluses. Such surpluses will bid down the value of most types of traditional labour (unskilled and skilled alike) as AI, computers and computer mediated automation replace human labour more and more.

Yes, that could happen. But human-nature is of such a quality as to "move on" and do something else.

There's always a good-idea just lurking around a corner. It behooves the right people to seize upon it and make it work. It helps also if they do NOT become multimillionaires, which keeps them dedicated to pursuing. Instead of passing on TV in shows that "interview billionaires". Worthless bullshat ...

 

[psikeyhackr]

How many high school graduates can explain what Net Worth is?

Adam Smith wrote about education in the Wealth of Nations. Search it for "write," write followed by a comma. He said "read, write, and account" multiple times. If accounting/finance had been mandatory in the schools since the 1950s what state would the economy be like today?

Not to mention how much manufacturing has been due to planned obsolescence over the last 70 years.

 

[basionok]

Universities may drop algebra graduation requirement because students find algebra too difficult

 

[psikeyhackr]

Universities may drop algebra graduation requirement because students find algebra too difficult

Maybe algebra should be a qualification for getting into college.