The Beginning of the Rants - On Education at Least

I'm sitting at my grandmother's kitchen table, having my morning coffee and indulging in reading the paper, The Oregonian. It's not the best paper - despite seven Pulitzer's - but it's the paper I grew up reading, and the morning ritual of reading the paper was one that grounded my childhood. 
     The paper is running a series about Oregon's money crisis. Like many states, the state faces a lack of funding and consequently, the series is titled "Hard Choices" as Oregon has some hard decisions to make about what stays in the budget and what goes. 
     Inevitably, the series would have to focus on education. Sure enough, the morning I sat at my grandmother's table, in my pajamas, hand wrapped around my coffee mug, I saw the headline: "Shrinking education funding calls for creative ways to prepare for tomorrow's work force." My grip on my coffee mug tightens.  Reading further, I discover that “Businesses will blow off Oregon if the state can’t produce an educated work force and good public schools for workers’ children” so says John Tapogna, president of ECONorthwest, a Portland consulting firm. 

        I haven't even finished the article before I'm so appalled I'm reading it to Kent and typing my letter to the editor. 

        I can't help it, but I find the word choice archaic. 

        The emphasis on tomorrow's work force, the use of the words work force - the language as well as the mindset - harks back to the Industrial Revolution. And during the Industrial Revolution, creating a work force was a valid concern: factories as well as industries needed workers.  Yet to now have the aim of the public education system to be creating competent workers - it's outdated. Honestly, if the goal of education is to provide workers for our nation's factories, then the current public education -- even in its depleted state -- is sufficient. If all we need of our students and future workers is follow orders and attend to an assembly line, then maybe we should forgo high school education all together and end it at the 8th grade. In fact, maybe we should duplicate whatever it is China is doing to create workers.
Except that China understands that to succeed as a nation they need to be more creative and innovative. They're putting the arts and music into schools as fast as we're taking them out.

I get that in discussing education the term work force as well as the idea of creating a world class work force is just part of the jargon. Nonetheless, in the articles I've seen in the Oregonian about the public schools, and in listening to the larger nationwide conversation about our public schools, creating a world class workforce isn't just part of the jargon. It's the vision. 

But I think it's the problem. 

        I wrote my letter to the editor. Because I sent it in via email, I wished for a Harry Potter like widget that I could install where when the Oregonian's editor opened my email, he would see my finger come out of the screen shaking at him. In the style of my grandmother no less. 

        Given that the current unemployment rate hovers around 10%, I don't think America actually needs more workers. It seems we have a surplus and sadly, many of the skills they've depended on to make a living have become as outdated as much as the vision for public education. 

        We do need creative, innovative, forward thinking individuals with critical thinking and problem solving skills who also have the ability to adapt as fast as the technology that changes and impacts how we work and live. We need the kind of people who have initiative and self-sufficiency and who start businesses, but also have the skills to have their business succeed. Relying on or hoping that outside businesses choose Oregon (or whatever state I happened to be in at the moment) as the location of the business, puts Oregon in the position of the victim. Maybe victim is to strong of a word, but Oregon becomes the object of the sentence – the one acted upon, or waiting to be acted upon. Oregon becomes the girl at the school dance standing by the wall, hoping the cute popular boy asks her.
One of the things I love about Oregon – besides the weather (ah cool crispness! How I have longed for you!) and the coffee and the books – is that Portland especially is known for its small businesses. In business circles, it’s been voted number one for places to a small business. As a result, when you’re in the city at least (and not in the suburbs that still prefer the big box stores) you are surrounded by stores and restaurants full of independent artists, designers, chefs, and creative business owners.
I haven’t lived in Oregon in eleven years, and I’ve only been back ten days. Yet I feel frustrated and heartbroken; I received a good education from Portland Public Schools (and in high school I wasn’t even paying attention, which I do think actually speaks volumes about the education I got, that it reached those of us in the depths of our own daydreams). But the qualities that made it good are gone: the arts, music, and Outdoor School (a week in the 6^th grade spent at camp for the purposes of hands-on earth sciences) is on its way out. But these things are disappearing not just because of lack of funding, but because the vision of a good education would rather focus on our students succeeding in the taking of standardized tests. We might as well replace our current education with SAT test prep courses.
You know of course this is only the beginning of my rants about education.