I said
> > That is, of course, why "education" is a useful concept. Education is
> > about learning, but not all learning is educational... This is petty, but
> > the West has become somewhat obsessed by "education as schooling".
In reply, Terri wrote
> Not at all petty. And what is almost more frightening to me, is that
> "schooling" has become increasingly viewed as simply preparation for work.
> My state's school-to-work project is a good example of that, where recently
> the governor went so far as to talk of "training in our public schools,"
> rather than of education. Hmmm . . . wonder what kind of implications there
> are within that for both our educational systems and the workplace? --
A part of the brave new revolutions in New Zealand is the almost-complete
official reduction of education to "school-to-work" training as you
mention. In one of the reports there was the announcement that there
should be no difference between education and training. The idea was that
education (particularly university education) was elitist, and worked
against job training. Thus education was to be virtually re-defined as
job-training. Implemented on a national scale, this is pretty disastrous.
This is partly due to the unhappy distinction between a public and a
private good. The elitist argument has some small merit in terms of some
traditional notions of the content (which flow through into the work of
R.S. Peters), but it pretty much betrays an ignorance of what education
might be about.
Graham
R. Graham Oliver (h) 07-856-3566
Education Studies, University of Waikato
Hamilton, New Zealand (w) 07-856-2859
E-mail: g.oliver@waikato.ac.nz
--"Graham" <goeduc@mailserv.waikato.ac.nz>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>