I have been thinking about the challenges we are facing in education.
In reading a little more about it, I came across a reference to research done in 1981 by Richard Easterlin in which he suggests that “increases at higher levels of education typically go together with the expansion of primary education. On the other hand, education of the elite without mass education is unlikely to foster economic growth” and that education of the elite in preference to the masses may have led to the decline of the Ottoman Empire.
This raises two questions for me. Firstly, if we are not providing the right educations for tomorrow because our schooling systems are broken, are we providing education to the masses at all ie is it not a worthless education? Secondly, are those who take the necessary steps to get the type of education that will have currency in the future by virtue of their scarcity, elites? If we apply the findings of Easterlin’s research, where a) education = national productivity and, b) elite education only ≠ productivity, the prognosis for the future is a little bleak on this continuous education front.
And it also seems we will be fighting this bleak battle on three distinct fronts in the years to come:
- Securing an initial education for the future out of institutions that are still structured for the past;
- Keeping current as we go through our working lives with a rapidly changing set of skill requirements; and,
- Getting re-educated or keeping learning alive as a consequence of living longer than ever.
Makes one tired just to think of it.