Seth Godin . . . on Education

Leave it up to the brilliant Seth Godin to put the problems of education into a brilliant statement.




Education was a conspiracy between the government and corporations.

Why?

Corporations were terrified that the industrial revolution would become too efficient and they would run out of factory workers.  They were also terrified that with all this ability to mass produce stuff, consumers wouldn't want to buy anything!  Remember, the average person over 100 years ago didn't have a dozen pairs of pants, four dozen shoes, and another two dozen shirts.  That's a big problem for a burgeoning industrialized nation.  They have to have consumers.  Or what's the point in producing all that stuff?

So public education came in to being for two purposes:

First, it was designed to create compliant factory workers.  You know the routine - sit in straight rows, follow directions, listen quietly, do your work and turn it in, pay attention in short chunks of time . . .


Second, to teach kids the best way to fit in is to buy stuff.  With back to school shopping right around the corner, is this last statement even a question?  I mean did folks in the 1900's even have the term "back to school shopping"?  Do we have back to work shopping?  Back to home shopping?

Any parent who has sent their kid off to school and had them come back (as I would routinely do to my poor mother) and say, "Mom! So-and-so had this.  I need it!  I have to have it! When are we going to Columia Mall?" knows this all too well.

And then when commercials came in to being and became a staple of TV, well, it was case closed for a society hooked on consumerism.

The problem with all of this is that some countries, like China and Japan, churn out students who sit quietly, follow the rules, and fill in bubble test perfectly.  That's why they excel and out test us.

But what this system doesn't produce are creative types.  People who interrupt and innovate and change things.  And this is one reason I read a study on China's school system that said they were moving toward our former model of education (which was much less industrial based than the one they have been using) because they want to become the innovators and changers of the 21st century.  When the Chinese educator saw our schools, he thought they were just like their schools from the 20th century because we want to catch up to them on basic skills tests!

That's lunacy.