More and more older Americans are blaming immigrants for wrecking “our” economy, along with everything else. Many believe immigrant children, especially “illegal ones,” are siphoning too much funding out of public schools.
The only “foreigners” I encountered growing up in Nashville in the 50’s were the Korean missionary who visited my father’s rare bookstore and a Latvian Bible College student who cleaned houses for spare change. I don’t recall any immigrants.
Times have changed. I married a wonderful Chicano poet from Minnesota. Our polyglot professorial son found his wife while teaching in Korea. (Unfortunately they live in Dubai with our two cherished HAPA grandsons.) Two-thirds of the 200+ U.C. Berkeley work study students I hired, trained, and supervised to work in a brain injury rehab center I directed for 30 years were South- or East-Asian. Most planned to become physicians, or at least medical researchers. Most succeeded.
The vast majority had better manners, more reliable attendance, and were less inclined to existential crises than our WASP students. They expected to work hard for long hours to achieve their goals, as did their families, even after establishing themselves and buying multiple homes.
In that way they resembled the victims in the two most frightening films I saw last year. These were not blockbuster horror movies. The first was a documentary on NHK World TV from the series Asia Insight about Filipino nursing colleges. The second was Episode 2 of Ilan Zev’s series, Capitalism, on the assembly lines of Chinese mega-factories that make Iphones.
Both films feature young workers working long hours six and a half days/wk and living crammed into dormitories even more crowded than their factories and classrooms. Many subsist by sharing the cheapest meal available from food trucks: white rice with hot sauce. Most consider themselves lucky. One exemplary employee proudly demonstrated her ability to perform a repetitive stress task 400X/minute.
The Filipino nursing students begin their programs at age sixteen. Almost all plan to emigrate to the United States, Japan, or Canada (the last promises permanent citizenship after two years of residency although most students plan to emigrate later to the USA, where wages are higher). Almost all share a primary goal of supporting their families, of becoming wealthy. In that way, at least, they’re like many of U. C. Berkeley’s East and South Asian students.
But are any of them getting an education? Depends on who you ask.
Only one third of college graduates currently land jobs that require a four-year degree. The rest struggle in low-skilled, low-paying positions. Many cynics feel this is the way the system’s supposed to work. After all, they say, everybody who’s anybody knows that public schools were invented to convert the droves of immigrants fleeing to our shores into passive pools of docile factory workers. That’s one way to look at it. But job training is not education in the traditional, classical sense of the term. Even if it were, it’s failing to strengthen our country.
The Digital Revolution has massively increased job insecurity. Over the next two decades 50 % – 80% of current jobs will be lost due to increased use of computers and robots.
In 2004, I attended planning sessions of SEIU’s International Convention as a member of the Executive Board of California’s largest union (SEIU 6434 for Home Care and Nursing Home Workers). I’ve never forgotten the debate between Filipino investors hoping to market the Philippines as idyllic tropical nursing home resorts and those who differed. The latter had documented facilities whose Japanese residents preferred robots wearing Japanese face masks to live Filipino nurses.
Automation is coming, not with a whimper but as a tsunami!
Peter Drucker, the “founder of modern management” and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, predicted that universities won’t survive. “The Future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom.”
What are some available models to study?
One of the most fascinating (and freely available) discussions about the future of education was showcased on the PBS series NOVA, in a full length feature. It was shown Sept. 14, 2016 and is called “The School of the Future.” I highly recommended you watch it while keeping certain facts in mind. The NOVA series’ major funder is David Koch, yes, one of the two notorious brothers. The series is notable for proposing “technical fixes” to the problems that it examines, such as comforting those who worry about climate change with glowing reports on the budding Mars project.
Let’s examine instead a couple of successful progressive pioneers that are similar to each other in tactics and goals but differ radically in cost! The first is the Putney School in Vermont. Founded in 1935, this secondary school offers a rigorous and progressive, hands-on education. Students here are encouraged to pursue their personal academic interests, and supported in presenting their findings in “coherent and compelling ways.”
But in addition to rigorous academic expectations, students have vocational requirements – they must satisfy six jobs during their stay—lunch, dinner, barn crew, dish crew, substitute, and land-use activities— while participating in an arts-based program two nights a week. This instills a different kind of work ethic rarely found in the classroom. Not to mention time management!
• Percentage of students at Putney who board: 79%
• Tuition, room, and board: $50,800
The other pioneer, Berea College in southern Kentucky is much older, and much more affordable. Long known for providing access to high-quality, low-cost education, Berea College has been named to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance’s list of the Top 300 Best College Values of 2017.
• Berea is the only one of America’s top colleges that awards every enrolled student a no-tuition promise. No student pays for tuition.
• Feminist writer, critic, artist bell hooks chose it to house her new Institute. It “strives to promote the cause of ending domination … critical thinking, teaching, events, and conversation.”
What other models and writers can help us reform education today?
My husband thrived on The University of Chicago’s Core Curriculum of “Great Books.” He continues to this day to read Ovid, Vigil, and other Classics in the original. I do not. I froth at the mouth if you mention Thucydides.
Randall Bass and J.W. Good have an excellent article in Educational Forum, The, v68 n2 p161-168 Win 2004, that examines two different Latin roots of the English word “education.” The first, “Educare,” means “to train or to mold”; while “Educere” means “to lead out.” Two quite different meanings and expectations that produce two different, often warring camps of parents and teachers. The first defines education as preserving and passing on of knowledge, “shaping of youths in the image of their parents.” It relies on rote memorization and a “scarcity mentality” to create docile, diligent workers.
The second camp utilizes questioning, challenge, and experimentation to create a new generation they hope will be able to solve future problems not yet known. And there’s often a third group that expects schools to fulfill both functions, but only funds activities and materials that promote “educare.”
The authors wisely caution educators who want to create balance in education to begin changing the organizational structure or the ways in which decisions are made. “Utilizing stakeholder perceptions in determining aims, establishing a shared vision of education, and facilitating a change in educators’ roles are initial steps.”
One way to begin would be to recognize students as primary stakeholders, along with local businesses and agencies willing to partner with and fund students who seek experiences that benefit their communities as well as themselves.
