Perhaps this morning I finally found my muse for writing on my blog title. Today it is President Bill Clinton. There was a very interesting interview today on MSNBC on the economy and on his Global Initiative. His initiative since it is not a corporation or government is able to cut through red tape and do things “faster, better and more quickly.” So he just admitted that a free market is the best market for turning our economy around. Now he was quick to say that he won’t comment on if the “government or corporations” are the best means of doing that. Kind of funny since he will fully admit that his free market Initiative is doing awesome, but this will not be the focus today.
The quotes that really got me were if we could fill the open jobs that people are not trained for “we would be in a different world we’d be looking at 6.9% (unemployment) not 9.6%” and “How can we get people trained for those jobs quickly.”
The second quote is where I will focus. The issue with education today is it is focused on jobs. Our public school system is designed to educate the masses to be obedient and good workers. However those who are innovators are changing the world so quickly that by the time a person is a College Graduate over 50% of what he learned as a Freshman no longer applies. That is if they graduate in 4 years, not 5.5 like me. How can a school system work when its focus is on making people job ready, when we don’t even know what jobs are going to be there for them in 5, 10 or 15 years from now. It is rather presumptive by our school boards and federal government to say they know what is best job path is for our children.
So what is the answer? Children must be taught to think, love to learn and know how to learn; a classical education. There is a basic cycle to learning and you cannot deny it and be true to yourself. Take something you love to do and are good at it. The first thing you did was learn the grammar behind it. What words describe what you are doing… you may have learned those words early in life and it is second nature, such as for a golf shot “bend your knees” or it could be new words you have to learn like in rugby “the prop shall not bore into the opposing prop and cause the scrum to collapse.” The second step is to learn how to do that action well. After years of practice I finally hit all my drives straight because I have my knees bent in the proper position every time. The third step is teaching it to someone else. Johnny when you hit the gold ball you need to keep your knees like this, and you’ll have to practice a lot to hit your shots straight every time. These steps are call the Trivum: Knowledge, Understanding, Wisdom.
If we understand for a person to be good at something, they will take these three steps if they want to or not. So for someone to be good at a job it would be wise he has these steps ingrained in them and the skills to master these steps. It doesn’t matter if they are making photo cells for solar panels or building a house. If they have these skills they can adapt to any job that is presented to them. Imagine if you had a job opening as someone came in for an interview; “I know I’m not qualified based on my resume, but I know how to learn. I will learn the terminology of my new job, I’ll work on doing it perfectly by coming to work every day and doing my best in every task you give me and since I’m new to this industry I’ll do it for less money than the ad says because I know there will be some extra training cost to you. By the time I’m done training I’ll be able to explain how to do it to the next person you hire.” That person would be hired in an instant. If he did what he said he would do then he would move up the company very quickly.
Instead our education system is designed to create mindless drones who are told what to do, just graduate and there will be a job for you. Thankfully a good number of you, 60% now a days, strive for something more then what the government gives you in education and do quite well. The rest are getting left behind. The masses are beginning to notice. The only way to have sustained unemployment numbers below 5% without future destructive government policies, like we saw in the 90s, is through education, a Classical Education.
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