The End of Vocationalism

                For decades now American education has been vocationalized in delivery and in content.  We have so imbedded the notion that education leads to work that questioning that assumption is almost heretical.  Students arrive on campus with program guides touting the quickest route through the maze of college to reach their career goals.  Eighth graders put together career portfolios talking about what they might become.  There are a lot of reasons to object to this trend.  The idea of a ‘well rounded’ person or a general education are usually trotted out as reasons to resist.  Sometimes the objections mention ‘soft’ or ‘integrated’ skills beyond career concerns.  Occasionally – but only occasionally – citizenship as a goal of a full education is offered as some buffer to the constant drumbeat of vocational education.  Even liberal arts colleges defend their existence by claiming that their graduates do better in professional programs and careers.

                There is, however, a more compelling reason to challenge the dogma that school leads to work: the end of work.  We are at the very early stages of a sea change in the way ‘work’ is thought of and performed in our society.  Automation and computers have already changed manual labor, and AI is about to send all of that into hyperdrive.  Some estimates are that in as little as 10 to 20 years 50% of the jobs in the economy will be eliminated.  Eliminated – not replaced by newer high tech, high paying jobs.  Eliminated.  If our experience with the digital revolution so far tells us anything, it’s that those estimates are too low and too slow.  The already frayed and problematic narrative of education leading to work is about to become an unsustainable fairy tale.  Children entering the public schools today are being introduced to a curriculum that, when they complete it, amounts to a long walk off a short pier. 

                It may be that no culture can prepare for such a profound transition.  Certainly, the banking families of Florence weren’t waiting in the wings with the monetary and constitutional programs that brought forth the Renaissance – they just reacted.  Maybe that’s all we can do.  But if there is something we can do to pile up sandbags before the flood, it must start with separating education and work.  Maybe if we can pull our collective heads out our text book and testing industry asses for a minute, we might find a better thing to do than prepare children for a future that will never come.  The questions they will have to answer aren’t on a bubble answer sheet.

                The next generation of students will have to think about climate and sustainability, including a sustainable level of human habitation.  They will have to wrestle with not just the potential and possibilities but the very real threat of AI.  Those questions will run through the so-called STEM curriculum, but they can’t be solved there.  There isn’t a single significant question facing that generation that won’t require ethics and values that must come from outside the technical and scientific realm.  The algorithms of AI and not human technicians are going to control the STEM world anyway.  What they are going to have to do is create a narrative of their place in the world that doesn’t end up sounding like “A Modest Proposal.” 

                The Fordist/Taylorist schools that served Modernity are not constructed to help students through the cultural transition is front of us.  It makes no sense to teach them to work in factories and businesses that won’t exist in their world.  They are going to have to be more divergent thinkers, more imaginative and more creative.  We can’t solve the problems they are going to face – we could at least get out of the way.