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Okay, this one is going to be even more sketchy than usual, more of me just formalizing a conversation with myself than usual. But these ideas have been haunting me all day, and I think it’s to the point where they simply demand some kind of post for the record, if only my own personal record.

Remarkably, the comments in question appeared at cnn.com; these aren’t entirely new ideas of course and, indeed, I’ve puzzled over some of them for years now which is part of the reason they struck a chord with me. Still, I think Douglas Rushkoff’s comments about work, technology and our entire economic system are pretty thought-provoking.

As noted, I’ve asked questions myself, at times, about the idea that what we need are “jobs” given how most people seem to dislike their jobs and how we don’t seem to be suffering any kind of acute shortage of the goods and services which jobs produce. But I think Rushkoff really got me thinking with this bit:

We’re living in an economy where productivity is no longer the goal, employment is. That’s because, on a very fundamental level, we have pretty much everything we need. America is productive enough that it could probably shelter, feed, educate, and even provide health care for its entire population with just a fraction of us actually working. […] Our problem is not that we don’t have enough stuff — it’s that we don’t have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.

I added the emphasis to the last bit, because that’s what has really been obsessing me. Everything else seems fairly sound and self-evident; it’s been a very very long time since western, industrialized society has known a famine or other “real” shortage of anything. Even our energy-supply crunches have been relatively mild, and as much a product of cultural choices as real unavailability of sufficient energy. One of the various “crises” we anguish over is, even now, an obesity crisis, and while I don’t want to oversimplify things that’s still pretty much a crisis of abundance rather than of scarcity.

But Rushkoff really crystalizes the situation and its implications by pointing out that, in this context, high unemployment is decreasingly a problem of shortages in goods or services produced by working people, and increasingly a problem of shortages of opportunities for people to signal themselves as deserving recipients of a share of the economy’s overall production, per our prevailing system for doing so. Which is paid work, i.e., jobs.

This, too, seems fairly obvious when one thinks about it, but I’ve never had these concepts brought into such sharp focus. (more…)

Well, contrary to intentions, I ended up writing an independent essay as my first “education post,” instead of writing the easier post I had seen as a nice “warm-up” to the subject. But I still want to note a few responses to this Atlantic interview with Cathy N. Davidson. I realize that “Fisking” seems to be looked down on as a bit of a cheap tactic, these days, and fairly so. I acknowledge that, but I still want to pull out a few of Davidson’s remarks; on the whole she has a lot of thoughtful and nuanced comments, and indeed my responses are not even entirely critical ones. So:

All the methods of assessment we use for “quality” are actually metrics for standardization analogous to the punch clock, not about interactive, synthetic, and analytical thinking and problem solving. You cannot reform the content or the method of teaching without radically changing the terms of assessment. That means ending the end-of-grade tests required by No Child Left Behind. It means going beyond so many of the quite simplistic quantitative measures that ostensibly test learning but really test the ability to take tests.

I’ll get this one out of the way first because it’s my most visceral reaction. Kill standardized tests? No no no no no no no no no no, noooooooooo, that’s what I excelled at most in school, nooooooooooooooooooooooooo unfair unfair unfair aaaaaaah!! Okay, had to get that off my chest. Thank you. Having done so, I admit that 1) I’ve graduated, 2) I was good at more than just standardized tests, and 3) fact is, per my own experience the systems of measurement and assessment used throughout the education system are all in all more than a bit misleading when it comes to learning skills which will be actually useful outside of school, so in a way I have as much reason as anyone to cheer her argument, here.

Games are integral in human society, from ancient times to the present. Games are based on strategy and on challenge. If you do well at a game, your reward isn’t “recess” or a “time out”; it’s a greater challenge. When you beat a tough opponent, you seek out a tougher one. That is learning.

Standardized testing seems to fit this description perfectly, though; the big problem I see with std. testing is that it was a game. In fairness, she does qualify her objections to testing methods (again, nuance, how refreshing): (more…)

I have been thinking about education issues for some time, and this seems like as good a time as any to collect my thoughts. Though they are still scattered, at the moment, and I will probably end up with a couple of posts here, at least.

We’ll see. I think part of the difficulty with this subject, of course, is defining the problem. In fact I’m pretty sure that there are multiple large challenges within the overall category of “education,” and identifying them is further complicated by questions about what the purpose of education is or should be.

When it comes to primary education, I think we can at least establish some kind of core goal, basically i.e. to sustain literacy and numeracy in our society, along with some rudimentary familiarity with history, civics, science and the arts. That’s by no means a comprehensive list of either current or proposed objectives, for K-12 education, but it probably serves as a reasonable starting point.

Whereas with higher education? I honestly have no idea. I’m almost beginning to suspect that modern colleges and universities, at any rate as we are familiar with them in the United States and peer nations, may prove to be something of an accident of history which brought together a lot of functions in a combination which, with a few more generations, will no longer make sense as a whole system. (Perhaps a bit like the struggling nationwide system of metropolitan daily newspapers?)

I think it’s difficult for me, perhaps for anyone, to fully grasp what going to college really means, simply because the experience can prove so transformative. It’s very hard for me to imagine, personally, a life without having gone to college and I suspect that it’s difficult for those who didn’t to appreciate all they missed, as well. For what it’s worth, let’s just try to list some of the things college can mean: (more…)