The corporations and their government have been telling us for years what kind of education our children should be getting – one that will prepare them to “compete” in a “knowledge-based, globally competitive economy.” We’re told we need an education system that de-emphasizes the humanities, and instead emphasizes science, technology, engineering and math. Of course, as it happens, this is the very system the corporations need to train their 21st century workforce.
So the corporations years ago declared a “crisis” in education and set about “reforming” the system to suit their needs. The only thing they care about is training the small high-tech workforce that they need to make money, and profiting from the $1.3 trillion education “market.”
But what is education really for, from the people’s perspective, especially in a world that is being completely transformed by technology? It can’t just be about getting trained for a job – the jobs are disappearing rapidly as they are taken over by the computer and the robot. The new technology means we can no longer have an economy where most of us sell our labor power to private employers and get a paycheck. There won’t be enough jobs to support that kind of economy. We are going to have to move to a new kind of society, where the people own society’s means of producing the things we need, and we simply distribute what is produced, according to need.
Technology in the hands of the corporations means mass unemployment and mass poverty.
Technology in the hands of the people would end unemployment and poverty. It would open up a whole new world for all of us, and allow us to create an education system that does what education is supposed to do – create a cultured, thinking person who can analyze the world around them and contribute to taking humanity forward.
As novelist and journalist Earl Shorris noted years ago in arguing for an education in the humanities, “The humanities are a foundation for getting along in the world, for thinking, for learning to reflect on the world instead of just reacting to whatever force is turned against you.” The humanities infuse our minds with great ideas and equip us to think and argue. And as educator Marion Brady has put it, through education, “The young should be exploring the potentials of humanness.”
Parents are rightly concerned that their children should be able to support themselves, but being trained for a job when the jobs are disappearing doesn’t offer anyone a future. We have to take the tools and the opportunity that history has handed us and build a new society where we no longer compete against one another, but cooperate to take care of each other.
The first step in putting our education system on the right track is to guarantee everyone food, housing and health care so they can learn. At the same time, we need to nationalize education in the interests of the people. By this we mean a publicly owned education system that provides education all the way through college and beyond for free. And a system that guarantees all the funding necessary for every school to serve every student.
This will help us reach our ultimate goal – a cooperative society, where all our needs are met, and where we can truly begin exploring the potentials of humanness.
