One of the things Jacobs talks about is the rise of credentialing in place of education. She says:
Credentialing, not education, has become the primary business of North American universities. This is not in the interest of employers in the long run. But in the short run, it is beneficial for corporations' departments of human resources, the current name for personnel departments. People with the task of selecting successful job applicants want them to have desirable qualities such as persistence, ambition, and ability to cooperate and conform, to be a "team player." At a minimum, achieving a four-year university or college degree, no matter in what subject, seems to promise these traits. From the viewpoint of a government agency's or corporation's department of human resources, the institution of higher learning has done the tedious first winnowing or screening of applicants. For the applicant, this means that a resume without one or more degrees from a respected institution will not be taken seriously enough even to be considered, no matter how able or informed the applicant may be. The credential is not a passport to a job, as naive graduates sometimes suppose. It is more basic and necessary: a passport to consideration for a job.
Jacobs talks of college or university education; in elementary and high-school education, the situation is similar. A high-school diploma, which is a basic qualification for even low-end menial jobs, is a sign to the prospective employer that here is an applicant who has demonstrated a minimum level of obedience and conformity. Someone who will follow orders, no matter how ridiculous they seem. Someone who will show up and leave at whatever hours are demanded.
The Ivory Madonna is aware that there are, in every school system, devoted teachers who genuinely strive to give their students the best education possible, often against overwhelming odds. She is also aware, from many friends (both current and former members of the education system) that schools are increasingly populated by "educators" (both administrators and soi-disant "teachers") who are themselves the drone-like products of mere credentialing factories. People with little imagination, native intelligence, or spark of passion. People who chose the education profession because "everything else was too hard." These are the villains of the current education system. And if what the Ivory Madonna's friends tell her is remotely true, these "educators" are driving good teachers out of the system in droves.
Even in the Ivory Madonna's time, high school and middle school seemed ideally designed for credentialism, in curriculum and in both official and unofficial social atmosphere. And today, things are worse. Those who do not follow orders and rules, those who do not conform, are disciplined, ground down into submission or discarded, forced to drop out. Independent thought is discouraged, independent imagination punished, independent creativity stunted. The goal is to produce obedient employees, unquestioning consumers, and pliant cannon fodder for the military.
[Once again, not every school, not every teacher. But, sadly, most.]
At the worst extremes, in the poorest schools serving minority populations that the corporate world considers disposable, schools become mere warehouses where children learn, from each other, destructive behaviors and cannibalistic social codes. These, too, serve the needs of the corporate Establishment: since dirt-poor people can't participate in the sonsumer economy, better that they eliminate one another (through death or by going into prison) rather than become a drag on the economy.
One must not hold the school system or the educational establishment to blame for this situation. The schools are only doing what we ask of them. The "educators," the ultimate products of their own system, are only doing as they are told, only following orders.
And yet we in the larger society refuse to recognize that education has taken a back seat to credentialing. We demand that schools do a better job of educating children, then we continue to elect pro-corporate, pro-consumerism government "leaders" who encourage schools to do more credentialing at the expense of education.
The Ivory Madonna has sat through hours and hours of debates between experts on how to improve education, and never has she heard anyone mention the problem of credentialing...or even acknowledge that it exists. Instead, they propose new testing regimes, new teaching methods, new textbooks, new computer programs, a million schemes to educate better. And all of these schemes fail, because education is no longer the first mission of our schools. The first mission of our schools is credentialing, discipline, preparing kids "to get a job."
Until we start attacking the assumption that credentialing comes first, we will never improve the process and results education.
M.
The Ivory Madonna's story is told in Dance for the Ivory Madonna by Don Sakers.
No comments:
Post a Comment