Education with personal goals

Most parents do not start their children’s primary education with goals in mind, with personal objectives. But, when general public education began to develop, there were goals underlying its founding. Many would suggest that Horace Mann was the founder of the modern American public educational system. This statement in no way implies that he was the founder of all the educational programs that existed during his primacy, and certainly did not contribute to the institutions that preceded him. His attention was focused on the education of the general public. Furthermore, his strategies served the rapid development of the American Industrial Revolution. Mann’s philosophies were implemented largely for the purpose of ensuring that our young citizens of European descent were educated enough to engage in necessary housework, care for equipment, and manage the new manufacturing infrastructure developing in our young America. .

The education system based on the Mann concept was enough to boost our economy to the primary benefit of the Anglo population and provided a significant advantage to this group along with the Jim Crow laws that legislated separate and rarely equal systems for people of all ages. other colors. Furthermore, because World War I, World War II, and subsequent major wars in Asia also decimated competitive knowledge and industrial assets, as well as skilled labor forces, in Europe and Asia until the mid-1970s, the United States United prospered. Since then, however, the United States has suffered losses of superiority in manufacturing processes, technology, and education. Furthermore, we never chose to develop a rich common culture by which to bind citizens together. As such, the US economic machine has ceded much of its superiority to others internationally.

With nationalism hardly an hors d’oeuvre on their pro-profit menu, a host of large American companies have chosen to relocate their manufacturing facilities to foreign countries for the benefit of lower wage costs for employees, a easier access to production materials, less critical environmental regulations and lower tax burdens. Not only does this take money out of our country, but many thousands of jobs are lost annually for international populations. Sometimes companies simply hire services to be performed overseas that could very handsomely employ and feed thousands of Americans. And, to add insult to injury, many US corporations that cannot transfer their work or facilities abroad lobby and take advantage of legislation that allows foreign nationals to acquire jobs within the continental US (e.g. H1B visas and J1). Don’t be fooled by employer protests that jobs can’t be filled with available citizens in any other way. Employers often pay their foreign employee counterparts the legal minimum rate, and even ask Americans to train them before the Americans are released from their positions.

What this means with respect to education is that there is a growing disconnect between employers and the US educational system (from elementary to advanced degrees), with less certainty of the value of any diploma, certificate or title in the market. An egotistical liberal arts education narcissist might suggest “We don’t educate students to perform tasks. We leave that kind of training to trade schools.” Colleges and universities, with their expanding ranges of majors and rising costs, graduate only fifty percent of those they admit, and most schools no longer align their curricular goals with the specific needs of the business sector. They no longer promote the delivery of valuable degrees in the marketplace, but instead sell the “opportunity” for students to thrive in robust, information-driven, experience-rich environments. Thus, an increasing number of students, if they graduate from college, manage to do so with tens to millions of thousands of dollars of school loan debt, diverse experiences, but no job prospects or offers in just the customer service and sales. The jobs obtained are often unrelated to what they studied.

Remember when Aunt Mary would pinch your cheek and ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Everyone laughed when you responded in a way that reflected your very limited exposure to the fact that people “did everything that mattered” besides spending time with you. As unimportant as those scenarios may seem, we should be asking our kids those questions regularly, from a young age. We should provide them with as wide a range of productive options as we can identify in our research. We must improve their 3R (reading, writing and arithmetic) skills as much as possible (with help) as a base, as they also learn to code, play instruments, compare, contrast, interpret, solve problems, learn to design and drive . tools and machines, interact effectively with others and demand more of the world around them as they grow older. We should show them that there are a demonstrable number of cultures and species sharing the planet, with diverse world surfaces, deep waters, vast skies, and uncharted space to consider. There are colors, sounds, aromas, textures, flavors, thoughts and planes of existence beyond our senses. We must emphasize that we apply vigorously and learn today, tomorrow and the day after so that one day they can select the preferred options, not the waste paper left by others, secondary systems and markets, leftovers for the ill-prepared. With perspectives and goals like these, our children will seek a higher level of achievement and experience an education with personal goals.