Socrates Don't Work Here

As I tried to settle in to Good Friday's solemn, sad, but hopeful afternoon, I made the mistake of checking my email and just glanced at a higher education news flash that appeared in the viewing window. A couple of groups, one a community college organization, are announcing a partnership with somebody in Africa to strengthen curriculum and improve job prep, blah blah blah. Having worked in community colleges for the past nine years, I can only laugh at the same old jargon. How about we just teach some concepts, allow the students to prepare themselves to be thinking adults, and then let them find their way in the work force? The idea of an apprenticeship or on the job training is anathema to higher ed now. Think of all that revenue out the window, or off the bottom line. Expectations at the college level have fallen to such a low that we might as well admit that thousands of the students at the Associate Degree level are only glorified high school graduates--finally--after two years of remedial work. They now might be able to understand a conversation with or decipher a note from their counterparts--the high school grads back in the middle of the previous century. I am guessing that an eighth grade graduate of the century before that may have had similar knowledge. When did we decide to relinquish opening minds and preparing critical thinkers to history and instead just train in technology, and not do that all so well? There are some amazing thinkers out there in their early adulthood, and they may have been exposed to some rigorous college courses, but the watered down pabulum available to so many college students today or else the desperate efforts to make up for wasted high school days does not make for an educated work force. Education is learning about how to learn and how to live life. Work is about training. Today's education system is confused and driven by the bottom line and teachers who fear for their jobs if they dare to think out loud. What a shame.
And don't get me started on the nationalization of education.