Keith: > Yes, I agree -- how to keep education relevant -- flexible, adaptible. and > the best way to do that is to get it as close to the market as possible. > Twenty years ago we had some superb government-run Skill Centres. They were > really excellent -- training fully-skilled millers in six months, for > example. The trouble was that the Skill Centres were always years behind > in the relevance of the skills they trained. Almost invariably, once a > course was up and running successfully, the job market decided it didn't > want any more of those skills. > > This is happening again in schools and universities. Because courses take > such a long time to develop (that is, they have to be "business-planned" in > detail to get funding from the Ministry of Education, etc) they're often > out of date when ready for students. This year, the universities will be > training tens of thousands of students in Media Studies but there are no > jobs for them. Time and again, what employers are saying to the Ministry of > Education in England "Can't we have some input into the curriculum?" > Parents, too, are nearer the real world than school teachers and ought to > have more choice of schools for their children.
I guess it boils down to a question of what education is for and what it is expected to do. Because the job market can change quickly, perhaps what is most needed is a sound but nevertheless general education that gives people the flexibility to move with trends in the labour market or with discoveries about themselves as they proceed through life (I started as an artist and turned out to be an economist - Egad!!). Turning out millers in six months may be a great accomplishment, but those millers may be stuck in a year and half when something happens that renders them irrelevant. We've had something like that happen in the Ottawa area, known as "Silicon Valley North". Ever so many people trained as computer scientist or technicians only to be confronted with devastating negative turn-around in that industry. Personally, I would like to see an education system that is very little influenced by employers, parents or politicians, and left to the educators. In my most recent incarnation as a parent, my daughter, now seventeen, attended one school in which parental influence was very strong and, quite frankly, at times devastatingly nutty. Having emerged from that unscathed, though perhaps damaged, she has attended schools that, while of a very high quality, were under tremendous pressure politically. We have a Tory government here in Ontario and it has done its best to undermine what is nevertheless a very good public system. Because we have been curious about the fate of our daughter at her various schools, my wife and I have gotten to know her educators. With some exceptions, we have found them highly competent, very much aware of how children learn (and they do tend to learn differently), and very frustrated at what they have to do with inadequate resources. They have my full sympathy. Ed Ed Weick 577 Melbourne Ave. Ottawa, ON, K2A 1W7 Canada Phone (613) 728 4630 Fax (613) 728 9382
