What Are We Educating For?

I drove home recently from a meeting with many provincial leaders from many sectors where literacy and education were dominant topics. Education and literacy are trumpeted by many as the panacea for New Brunswick’s economic and social woes. It’s been like this for a while now, but it probably started with confederation, when things started going downhill for NB.

Education and literacy is like breathing, who could be against it? With over half of the province’s adults counted as functionally illiterate few could blame politicians, businesses and educators for wanting to tackle it.

I've been thinking about this as an employer. The skills we need as a start-up include systems thinking, communications (in its many forms), self awareness, mental agility, creativity, initiative, self-learner and self-motivated, among others. Will the pressure on the school system to increase literacy help produce more employees with these assets?

I've just started Ken Robinson's book Out of Our Minds, which examines this question of education vs what society and organizations need.

“Business wonders why education isn’t producing the thoughtful, creative, self-confident people they urgently need. Yet business people cling to an uncritical belief in the supreme importance of academic education.”

We have to educate everyone and to a higher standard. That includes literacy. We don't have a choice about that.

We should also be asking questions about what we are educating for. Reading this book is making me worry that our obsessive focus on literacy takes us “back to basics” at the exclusion of all else. We should know now that the world where basics was all you needed is over.