There has been a great discussion going on over at Bump on the Log and We Live in Interesting Times about whether we should or should not be preparing our students for the “business world”. Now, in reading through the posts and the comments, I began to wonder what exactly we are preparing them for? I mean, I don’t know how many times I’ve heard someone say
Wait until you get into the real world. They won’t put up with that or you won’t get away with that or something to that effect.
I always wondered about that whole line of thinking. Now, if we are preparing them to work in the business world, then what we do in school really should follow, in some way, what is happening in the corporate sector. For me, it’s reading blogs like Changing Way , The Bamboo Project blog and Connecting the Dots. They help me to see what is going on elsewhere. I have also hooked up with some blogs that deal with training like Janet Clarey and Donald Taylor . I am able to see how what they discuss should have overlap in our educational systems. Sometimes it does and, well, sometimes it should.
Now, if we aren’t preparing them for the business world, then we had better be preparing them to be productive citizens in our supercharged, superchanging society. Really, we have no other option, do we? But hold on, if we are doing that, where are all the tools and technology that are changing how society looks at almost everything. From fastfood to virtual worlds, we are experiencing a time when change is the norm. Yet, for all the changes that have been directed at schools, we continually see that, in fact, they haven’t really changed all that much. They are still very similar to what they were in past decades where learning is controlled and dolled out in small measures at appropriate intervals. Where those who excel at taking tests continue to rise to the top and those who don’t fit the system are skimmed away.
So what exactly are we preparing them for? Does the comment about entering the real world hold true? Have we become so removed from what is going on around us that we are now petrified into inaction? Is this why teachers and others refuse to change the present system? Are we afraid to become relevant? Do we fear that in doing so we would be found lacking? Should we not be saying something like “This is a trial run of what life will be like?” “We’re here to help you build your skills for life tomorrow.” Unfortunately, at this point, we don’t seem to be doing that at all. So, although the conversation at Tim and Brian’s is very interesting, it might be more theoretical than real. Unless, of course, our school systems begin to change in dramatic ways. Well, it could happen!
13 responses so far ↓
I wonder if it could help to shift this idea of preparing young people for ‘the real world’ to giving them the opportunities to create the real world. There have to be stronger links between education and ‘the outside world’ if young people are to begin to create and contribute to their own futures. I think if teachers concentrated more on their own learning in the real world then schools would be better places.
Your blogg is fantastic. Thanks for the opportunity to learn from your learning.
Brian and I started this discourse last week.
It is an interesting mental exercise to try to find out what we need to be preparing kids for. Brian’s arguement essentailly is: “Everything is Business” ergo, we need to prepare kids for the buisness world. My arguement was that “the business world is not everyhting” and that many of the problems we are now experiencing in education is a direct response to education reacting to what the “business community” wanted.
Tim
El Paso
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eve, that is a good way to see things. We know we are preparing them for something but we’re not sure what. It would be a change to have them create things instead of trying to prepare them for we know not what.
Tim, as I read through both of your posts and the discussions that ensued, I understood basically where each of you were coming from but it made me think of what is happening in schools compared to what is happening all around schools. Inside the schools we’re doing things that really are not related to what is going on elsewhere regardless of where you stand. The incredible testing regime that has been adopted by so many of the school authorities isn’t really preparing students to be creative problem solvers. We see glimpses of things happening outside this but, for the most part, school is continuing as it has. Maybe, as eve suggests, we need to alter our thinking from preparation for doing to preparation for creating.
I agree. BUT..all this crap we are currently going through is a direct response to what the”outside world” ie. business, wanted us to do. So now, after all these years, and all the teeth gnashing, we are left with what business wanted. Accountability and testing was all a part of the business world telling education what to do. That is why I am leary of business now saying “Change your ways”
I’m leary too! That’s why I think that this is so much different. We have educators saying we need to change. We need to look at what we are doing in a different way. We need to revamp the system. And, the message is different from the whole testing mentality. Accountability is only part of the equation - we’re seeing that. We need to give students the freedom to create and respond to what we are asking them to learn. We are beginning to really look at options for response beyond the traditional paper answer or poster picture. There still needs to be parameters, definitely, but, truthfully, business doesn’t really know what they want because they’re in a constant stage of flux and change and what is good now may not be in the near future. So, if we prepare them, as you state, to be creators for a business world that has yet to be created, then maybe we are doing what needs to be done.
I am very leary of the prepare for business theme. I have many wonders about the future and I see among the posibilities, the chance that my children or grandchildren’s life will look more like that of my grandparents than it does mine. So in a world where your food is eked from the ground in your own backyard and the comforts you get are the ones that you can imagine and create with that which is in your local much-threatened biozone, what will bring you joy? I have this feeling that teaching needs to be about teaching for a contentment which comes from within. I am not sure how the digital world and this other possible one will intersect as I expect they will or might but I believe that teaching for joy and contentment beyond that which you can buy will be a part of it.
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There is a danger in tailoring education in the public schools to meet the needs of business. For the past year, I have attended workshops that indicate that business expects graduates to posess this skill or that set of skills, and I always take anything that business expects with a grain of salt, actually, more like several pounds of it. Business is not the be-all-end-all destination of graduates, and to tailor courses to that end is myopic.Business is just one destination for our graduates. Medicine, the arts, science all have a stake in the graduating class. We therefore should prepare our students to achieve a variety of successes, not just one. Preparing high-schoolers to be able to make logical, life enriching choices is the key, not trying to pidgeon hole them into one specific career. We should be educating versatilists, those able to cope with a variety of career situations.
David,
Good point! And glad to see you commenting here
David, I agree that is what we should be doing but I don’t think that we are doing that as well as we could be. Most educational systems do not allow for students to push their own understanding into a new level. We are looking for them to master particular knowledge and skills but not necessarily asking them to create and demonstrate understanding. They can demonstrate that they know particular facts and pieces of knowledge but there is not enough being done to have them go that next step. Oh, and glad to have you commenting!
I don’t know what we are preparing them for anymore but it is time for change.
When else in our lives are we segregated by age, into 48 minute units of time? What does that prepare anyone for? Where what happens within the four walls of (high) school is so disconnected from what occurs in student’s real world? Where rubrics dictate what is expected? (Have you ever seen a rubric outside of school?)
This system may have worked for previous generations but the 21st century requires new ways of looking at learning and engagement.
We continue to hear that schools are not preparing our students for what is to come. Yet we continue to try get new and different results using the same old methods. It’s like people are trying to deny that all these changes are happening and just keep doing what they’ve been doing although it’s not working. They keep hoping that it will all go away or they can convince everyone that if we just test enough things will get better or that these new things are just for kids and real education involves “experts” that can’t be found on the internet.
As much as I resist sometimes, I am a progressive teacher deep-down. Which is to say, that education should prepare students to be who they are. The drive for K-12 schools to be feeder for corporations is driven by the perceived need to maintain the power and status of the United States. What we really need are artists, writers, revolutionaries, teachers - people who have the ability to change their world, and who can actually draw a direct line between colonialsim and the atrocities occuring in Africa, just to name one issue.
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