Over the last sixteen years of my teaching career, a decided change has occurred within the realm of education. When I began my career, and even going back to my own distant and not quite esteemed high school career, there was a moderate call for education as a method of occupational success and earnings. Today, the call for “learning” for the sake of making money is pervasive and deafening. The call for “career/money-obsessed education” even turned on its origins, wiping out vo-tech education as beneath the children of the world’s most prosperous country. Don’t believe me? Try suggesting to a high school guidance counselor to invite a technical trade school to career day. If you can watch the physical recoil without a response or giggle, you are a better person than me. Today, it is college or bust. Today, children are told to make education an “investment” in their future.
Today, students are inundated with messages of money, career and the connection of that to happiness and self-fulfillment. They are taught that meaning in life is unequivocally tied into the university and the salaries and fields of endeavor that can be acquired. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a fanatical proponent of higher education. I have a bachelor’s and a master’s however, I see those achievements more than the financial rewards that they have generated (though, in public education, such rewards are small, to be sure). And, before charges of communism are levied, I’m also a big fan of money and would never turn it down. Yet, what is the impression of the student who realizes, as I did for a time right out of high school, that college is not for them and they want something else out of life? It can’t be good. And, the purpose and value of education can’t be about money or success. It is much more important.
Still, as much as the public education system is encouraging students to sell themselves out and turn the pursuit of education into the pursuit of money, the education system is leading by example. Today, the focus of education is about testing and schools are doing nearly everything they can to apply for federal dollars and make sure their test results are the best in the district. In Atlanta, Georgia, hundreds of teachers and administrators have been sacked for falsifying the results of the state’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT). The paradigm for the kind of school districts and leaders who would perpetrate this type of fraud is not based on education but on the pursuit of state and federal dollars, rankings and if they are really lucky, an appearance on the U.S. News and World Report best school issue. It has nothing to do with what is best for the students or the advancement towards the pursuit of knowledge.
In case one thinks this is an American phenomenon, one need only to look to Europe. In the Netherlands, a major school scandal has rocked the university education system. The InHolland University of Applied Science has been under scrutiny for one offense after another since the early part of the year. The biggest scandal came back in the spring when the school was found to have awarded diplomas on the scantest of qualifications and standards. The questionable diplomas have been ruled invalid, students who have graduated from these programs could be forced into the awkward situation of returning to school and retaking courses, though they have current jobs based on the old diplomas. The icing on the cake stems from government funds that are awarded to schools based on the amount of diplomas awarded. The director of the school group, which have six branches throughout the country, announced in May that the school accepted the findings of the government investigator and would work hard to strengthen the rigor of the school and its diplomas. However, the damage is done, deepened by new scandals on overpaid executives and according to new reports, enrollment is down and once again, the presence and temptation of money have sent schools down a non-educational path and the students suffer.
As long as money and testing attached to money is a characteristic of the education system, the education quality and the subsequent success will never materialize. As an educator, I’m painfully aware of my field’s shortcomings and, in the bigger picture, my likelihood of effecting large scale change in my current position. The worst part is that I can’t even have this conversation – not with administrators or parents. Most have been trained in the current mindset and cannot be deterred. When education opened up from an activity of the wealthy and elite to the masses, it was framed under the guises of the lowest common denominator – work, money, status. In the elite’s mind, these were the things that mattered most to the common man. Over the last century, it has ebbed and flowed over other concepts such as national identity and a good citizenry. Today, educators have thrown away such notions with a cynical sneer and have boiled down the motivation for school to its most base form. It will take a great deal of soul searching to remove ourselves from the abyss. I wonder if we have the stomach for such introspection.
For more information on the Atlanta situation, check out the Atlanta Journal and Constitution's special section on the subject:
http://projects.ajc.com/topics/metro/schools/crct-cheating-investigation/
For more information on the InHolland School, check out the Dutch news English website's search list on the subject:
http://www.dutchnews.nl/searchresult.php?cx=008221010404510662473%3Avzie3leg34o&cof=FORID%3A11&q=Inholland#0
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