Surprise surprise. Sunday’s NY Times had two very good editorials. More surprising however is that one is about education! “There are many reasons to improve education, to welcome immigrants and to advance other policies aimed at transforming the work force ad society. But a skills gap is not among them….Fretting about a skills gap that does not exist will not help.” There goes the whole excuse for privatizing our ”failed” school system that caused the so-called skills gap, and the skewing of the curriculum and on and on. So at last when I say the same thing people might not think I’m a kook—or at least not for that reason. I can say the NY Times says it’s true.
Filed under: 2013 posts |
Deborah Meier on Education 
Repeated identification of a “Skills gap” is another excuse for gutting local and regional programs and replacing them with “reliable” programs that guarantee mediocrity and are best administered by giant corporations. How’s this for a skills gap?: consider the gulf between people who administer education from the state, federal and corporate level and the people who are in classrooms every day creating relationships with real students.
Right right right!
I think the NY Times is partially wrong on this. We do not have a skills gap in today’s economy in the sense that there are jobs left open with no one to fill them, but we do have a long term skills gap in producing innovative kids for tomorrow’s economy, kids who can develop new approaches to new challenges. This is an opportunity for progressive education, which can legitimately say that it’s commitment to creativity is precisely what the economy needs in the future.. In other words, I think proponents of progressive ed need to be speaking of a skills gap of a different variety…