Strike three

Canada doesn't seem to do too badly when its 'brighter lot' are stacked up against the world's brighter lots. So enough about how bright our kids are, Ms. Wente.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4073753.stm

And the top-flight country for education, Finland, doesn't do things a whole lot different than does Canada.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,5500,1042479,00.html

And yet it produces results all out of proportion to the inputs, and without ignoring the same problems kids all over the world seem to grow up with.

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11477890

Could be right, Mr. Persky. School doesn't do well competing for the attention of kids raised on a techno-drive sound bite. But it's important to note one more factor - today's kids were raised by parents who spent most of their early years dissing everything that came before them, and never counting the cost of the missed opportunities, the books unread, the philosophy unthought, the stimulating intellectual conversations unspoken, the variety of human experience and point of view unexplored....

We may be a generation or two recovering from this morass.

I agree with the critique

I agree with the critique offered in the article, so I have just a few points:

Increasing per-person productivity through better educational outcomes right across the board is the only chance Canada has of maintaining (let alone improving) its place within the global value chain (that, and attracting & retaining talented technologists, scholars and researchers from overseas). This doesn’t just include university, it includes college & polytechnic enrollment, adult basic literacy and essential skills, prior learning assessment and recognition (“PLAR”), and early childhood development (upon which all future education outcomes are based). The reason is simple: Canadian heterosexuals are not breeding like they used to (for a bewildering array of reasons) and our population is slowly hollowing out as the generations turn over. In other words, Canada is slowly turning into a fallow backwater.

It’s also important to note that males like "Jake" comprise the lion’s share of PSE and high school drop outs. This has been the pattern for the last 17 years, and is important in terms of long-term national productivity for this reason: a professional male with PSE is still 30% more productive over the course of his career than his female counterparts (“productive” in labour market terms, which by no means provides the whole picture, of course). So men like “Jake” are still the worker bees when it comes to economic productivity, and yet we’ve been clipping their wings systematically for the past two decades. And the policy response to this long-standing dilemma has been nil.

Having said that, the university isn’t what it used to be, and young people are bombarded with alternatives, all of which are keen to corner their education dollars. The nature of the university is diverging – and they're facing competition from increasingly sophisticated colleges and the polytechnics, which are ahead of the universities in terms of labour market linkages and collaboration with local business sectors, and which are gaining ground in terms of degree-granting powers and recognition.

And on top of this, kids today (i.e. the “digital natives”) have acquired so much non-formal and in-formal learning before they even enter PSE that educational bureaucracies can’t even keep up – they’ve already got a near-finished product walking through their doors, so how do they add value? That's where branding comes in.

The bottom line is that our national livelihood depends on ensuring people like “Jake” survive our Byzantine educational bureaucracies, and succeed in the labour market by tapping their full potential….even if “Jake” isn’t an English Lit major.

Who is university for?

University is becoming more and more for the rich and those that can can win scholarships. Students looking to make decent wages, but not enter a profession, know that university is not a job-training centre. University is a place where you can really discover the person you are, and it's a shame that more, not less, young people cannot take advantage of that.

It is not so hard that the average person cannot get through a university degree. Anyone who thinks that should note that George W. Bush muddled his way though Yale and then Harvard business school. For someone with all the advantages money can buy, and really crappy highschool grades, he is the proof that anyone with average intelligence can graduate if they want to. Most students I knew who dropped out of university did so due to maturity issues and not that they weren't capable.

Demographic time bomb?

Um! I don't think so.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2002/dec/15/comment.theobserver

I had to delete a few things

I had to delete a few things to make the word limit, so two points of clarification:

1. PSE = post-secondary education.

2. The most common reason for dropping out of PSE (by both males and females) is what is called "bad program fit". The program does not meet the students' expectations or goals. Therefore, it makes sense the question the guidance and career counseling they're getting in public school. The state of guidance counselling in high school is universally bad. Having said that, we should also save some criticism for labour market stakeholders, who have done a terrible job of explaining what their skills needs will be in a year's time, let alone in five years. All these factors complicate the decision-making of PSE entrants. Unfortunately, this "bad program fit" dynamic has been an amazing money-maker for institutions, as students sink loans and savings into investments for which they will ultimately receive no recognition or remuneration.

Different Paths...

Having just completed my university degree I can say that high school students are not aware of different educational paths out there.

I know a lot of people that went to university simply because that's what their friends were doing and they didn't want to be left behind.

I certainly think that there are students that go to university simply because they believe there aren't any other options. High school teachers do not present other options to their students: trade school, college, school overseas...

Commenting specifically to the author's comments about universities creating "informed citizens". Not sure that's working. Our generation is one of the most apathetic. We don't vote, we don't get involved in our community and we're constantly glued to the TV or computer.

Stay in School!?

Beware becoming a critical thinker can result in depression when few appreciate criticial thinking and many prefer denial!

My pet peeve is the diminishing value of a university degree when the universities seem so happy to give out honourary degrees!

What is my university degree worth when Ralph Klein can receice an honourary doctorate?

As for the education system has anyone read Ivan Illich?

An education system designed to manufacture consumers, rather than critical thinkers!

Oops typo!

when Ralph Klein can receive a honourary doctorate!

Not early enough in the game!

"...a substantial amount of "general" education, which all too often is not the case in the curricula of today's trade and professional schools."

Now, why would it be? They are trade and professional schools. Their job is to teach trades and professions. How about we try to address the 'general education' issues divvied up between home and elementary? If it includes the successful selling of the idea of life-long learning, our kids will make it their business to pick up the needed updates and upgrades of the general stuff as they go, as must we all into adulthood. I need to pass a fire and safety test every year, possibly a transport of dangerous goods certification, and sometimes a non-violent crisis intervention as well, in additon to professional update courses, but the past forty years, no one has offered me any 'general education'. it is assumed that you do that on your own from, say, fifteen years of age, yes? I choose this, because when I was young, one's criminal record started running at 15, and nothing would ever get stricken from it after that age. So, it was assumed you had the ability to learn independently even before that. I have not heard of a decline in human mental suffciency in general, unless it is a result of social engineering. So, please can we do this stuff in grade school and use post-sec for the hard goods?

If we can accomplish this, maybe we will not need our universities cluttered with mickey mouse courses meant to be catch-up attempts, and maybe we will not need everyone to go there in order to pick up the bare minimum of general orientation, an absurd idea, actually.

Illich

It's hard to imagine a world where Ivan Illich's insights are taken to heart Freebear, but I think it might be a lot more pleasant place to live for everyone.

Productivity Training Centres?

I'm surprised nightbloom agrees with this critique because Persky is speaking against the application of this very brand of corporate claptrap to education. Education is a lot more than job preparation. Broadly, it's life preparation.

Unfortunately, our institutes of higher learning are being corrupted to largely focus on meeting the needs of industry. This actually undermines the an education's potential because graduates will lack the soft skills that make them much more than worker drones.

This reminds me of the comic situation in Singapore in the mid-1990s where the government was exhorting its citizens to be creative in order to be competitive in the knowledge industries when their Confucian system conditions them not to be. Corporations here seem to be equally stupid.

General Education Generally Lacking

Maybe that's the problem. People assume this and don't actually look at whether or not this is the case. The widespread civic illiteracy and apathy I see indicates our citizens' 'general education' is seriously wanting.

I agree with Persky:

Universities as job mills

This is the key part of the critique:

"What's gone wrong with the universities is that they've bought in (or have been forced to buy in by the marketplace) to the idea that they're job training centres, rather than places to educate citizens, acculturate people, and stimulate the ability to think for one's self. What's more, the misdirection of post-secondary schooling is exacerbated by market pressures to adopt industrial methods of instruction."

Have also taught in universities and witnessed this for myself. Also have seen the erosion of student entrance skills and felt the pressure to accept sub-standard work - all in the name of pumping out more 'graduates'. In the end, those graduates find themselves serving burgers anyway.

University is for jobs?

1. Yes. University is hella expensive. If you just want to have something interesting to read, go to the library, it's free and you'll learn as much. (Possibly more.) If I'm taking on a mortgage worth of student loans, it had better pay off, literally.

2. Are some kids low in intelligence, or are they the products of a barren culture?

What difference does it make, Stan?

Margaret Wente's article in the recent Globe and Mail

Well said, Stan. Thank-you for addressing the off-hand, shallow assessment of why Margaret wants less educated readers to not read the Globe and Mail?

informed bus driver

Here's one bus driver, among many, I can assure you, who is an informed citizen with a degree, now working toward his MA in liberal studies at SFU, part time, whilst driving full time. A person working a trade may be doing so for reasons having less to do with formal education and more to do with preferences for honest labour, away from the reek of stale air and office politics.

As usual

As usual Persky missed the point of Wente's column which was that we value a third rate university education over first rate skills in a trade. It is possible for a plumber or carpenter to be well read and intelligent but no one who has tenure at a university wants to admit the possibility of learning without the help of a multi million dollar institution.

Ms Wente herself is proof of her thesis...

that some people just aren't smart enough to learn anything in college.

Witness her 2004 missive "Will David Suzuki please shut up", in which she railed against his claims concerning the deleterious effects that fish farming would have on the BC salmon fishery, in which she gave great prominence to a young female graduate working in one such fish farm (who obviously would have been out of a job were the farm closed).

Unfortunately, while Ms Wente may have mastered the paragraph, her ability to differentiate between corporate bumpf and science was never developed. Dr. Suzuki has to our sorrow proven to be correct (not that this was surprising; the information was available in the literature and he was able to access it) and Ms Wente was proven to be otherwise. I may have missed it, but I don't recall ever seeing an apology.

Since small colleges now produce such esoterica as nail technicians and hairdressers, perhaps Ms Wente should consider vocational training herself? After all, just because someone can master a paragraph doesn't mean that they are capable of absorbing a university education.

Good article, Stan.

A Few Other Questions for Wente

Which kids should go to University? Her kids.

Which kids shouldn't go to University? Our kids.

Margaret Wente

Like it or not, Margaret Wente is an ideological dingbat. If you want a bit of fun, go into the Globe's archives and get out her pre-Iraq invasion columns where she swallows, digests and reguritates every obvious lie she was fed by the Iraqi dissidents, Chalabi's gang. The paper ought to have been ashamed of her cupidity but, no, she's still running the same approach to anything and everything.

Wente

Rather generous, that "D"

Ah, Wente's just a snob

I could argue that some young people just aren't boring enough to sit through four years of university. I only did it because I love reading, had a healthy dose of partying mixed in the first three years, and at 19 hadn't a clue what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It was another decade before I was even close to knowing.

My younger brother, on the other hand, knew from day 1. I used to watch him draw when he was 3- fabulous talent. So he dropped out of highschool when he was 17 because he felt like he was wasting his time there, taught himself video game design, and now works in London for a top company and paints in his free time. The heading under "education" on his resume is either blank or just not there, I suppose.

Formal education is fine, but it's not for everyone. One certainly doesn't need to have degrees to be "smart". It's a good place to bide your time if you aren't sure exactly what you want to pursue in life. With the cost of tuition nowadays though, "biding your time" isn't as carefree as it used to be, I'm sure.

Post-Secondary Should Shoulder Some of the Blame

I came home from my teaching job in a severe funk this afternoon, and it was interesting to read Stan's timely article not long after. I was invigilating a provincial exam this afternoon, and from a school of 1100 students there were only two - that's TWO - students writing the provincial exam in Biology 12.

For those who don't know, almost all BC universities and colleges have now made Grade 12 provincial exams optional (except English 12). Arguing that the province has made them optional, universities and colleges are jumping on the bandwagon and lowering their standards as well. Let's face it: it's a straight business decision. They are trying to put as many buns in the seats, no matter what it takes. If this means judging strictly on GPA, a measure which is almost a laughable farce at the high school level, then so be it. If they get students with a 4.0 GPA in weight lifting, photography, stagecraft and leadership, rather than a 2.7 GPA in challenging academic courses, then so be it. And if students can't hack it, well, we've got a whole host of remedial courses... that the students can pay for! [Remedial courses have become a big growth industry, esp. in the community colleges and so-called "regional" universities.]

To the typical adolescent, the new policy means "no more provincial exams". And I suspect we may now be seeing the end of prov. exams within a year or two. Out of ideological reflex, many of you might think this is a good thing, but I urge caution. When the mainstream research universities start seeing an even further drop in academic skills, there may be a renewed effort to provide some sort of screening device.

Will the Grade 12 provincial exams make a comeback, then? Perhaps, but I wouldn't bet on it. The current government talks a good game about assessment and standards, but it's also cheap. Most of the new exams that they've pushed onto the younger grades are unadulterated multiple-choice garbage. [I personally don't mind teaching towards a test, but it's got to be a good test, and that usually costs money.] The Liberals have shown a lot of desire to push us into the user-pay model with massive tuition fee increases. And if exams must return, then I believe it will be students and parents who will pay the freight - just like they do in the USA with SAT and other private entry tests.

So, be careful what you wish for. The alternative might be much worse.

In the meantime, I don't see much room for optimism. I applaud your cheerfulness, Stan, but I wish I had reason to follow suit.

Instant Gratification

We live in a world of instant everything, you can get everything without any effort now. You can even dial up your favorite song on your ipod without having to thumb through dozens of albums, take the record out of its sleeve, place it on the turntable and put the needle to the correct song.

Google and wikipedia helps us find information instantly.

We even have microwave dinners ready in seconds.

But learning, real and meaningful learning isn't like that. It takes long hours, effort, tenacity and patience. I feel we've lost this. The well crafted paragraph takes time, and numerous rewrites.

Attention spans are down, but the nature of learning hasn't changed. The brain takes its time learning something. While google and wikipedia have instant access to information, they do not give us instant learning or meaning. I'm not sure many students of today have figured this out.

A degree vs. education

Stan Persky, THANK YOU! This subject is particularly close to my heart, and you said it so well. Additionally, Margaret Wente seriously annoys me 8 out of 10 columns she writes and I have written many mental letters to her late at night! So thank you so much for taking the time and thought to write this rebuttal. Our society is becoming more inhuman and inhumane every day, with the Corporation becoming the new God and Business the new Church. Universities are seemingly buying into this more and more, as funds are cut, the feds cut funding, and industry is willing to put up big bucks in the university, in return for selling their "dream of reality". I also agree with you regarding the culture the kids grow up in. Little family interaction, reading, board games, puzzles, intellectual games. Lots of television, video games, IM's, chats, phones, & gadgets that become increasingly superficial and lack any need for background knowledge, understanding or the need for critical thinking. I am really saddened when I see so many of these students now, who have an intellectual vacuum in their lives. As was recently said by one U.S. student - "Pearl Harbour was what started the Vietnam war." And another, "Charles Dickens? Some guy who was the president of some country a few years ago."
It does matter. "Those who don't know their history are bound to repeat it."

Yes Canary,dorothy and

Yes Canary,dorothy and cocean, too right.

Nightshage nailed the article perfectly IMO. Except that Nightshade said "Increasing per-person productivity through better educational outcomes.." where I think people (and maybe nightshade) meant 'higher' education I am not sure that accounted for skilled trades.

Stan sounds oddly spiteful (jealous?)of the superior writer. When an MBA isn't a joke, when a Masters again means you worked hard for it and teacher's didn't fly to the states to get brutally cheap degrees for wage boosts, when Universities again actually reject students that fail to achieve then I'll respect the system and will stop seeing it as a factory for diplomas. Until then, I'll work on getting one of those babies myself, it may not make me smarter but it will sure boost my pay! It needs meaning or it is a trade school, culturally universities have lost their prestige, thats a fact. Wente simply explains why.
Is it just me or are there a lot of "eat the rich" types reading the Tyee?

The mouse that roared

Let's just say that Ms. Wente probably doesn't spend too much time speaking to or interacting with young people. Too many columnists or journalists are unfortunately practising an art when it comes to compiling newspaper articles. Opinions of lone individuals who walk to a fax machine to decide what interests them each day by reading press releases. It's not real. It's not reporting. There is a teacher for everyone and a student hoping for that one teacher who won't douse the flame of his or her ambition by reacting in a brow-beating matronly fashion. "You WILL do it my way, or I'll fail you!" Bored, uncaring, old wasps (dare I say the infeminine feminist) too wealthy (or too lazy) to bother getting their facts straight from the horses mouths. As much as most people probably wouldn't like to come face-to-face or go toe-to-toe with Peggy, she probably would be just as scared to deal with real people in the real world on an everyday basis. It happens. You age and you forget what it was like to have dreams, and more importantly, ambition. I'd suspect, most of our smart "with it" young students don't read her column. She's not writing it for them. She's writing it for her crowd; her fan base. They can have her. When she retires, the organization she works for will replace her with a similar model. They probably even believe they have a diverse voice ... when in reality, truely, it's all the same? Smugness. Old smugness.

And again, and again...

"What's gone wrong with the universities is that they've bought in (or have been forced to buy in by the marketplace) to the idea that they're job training centres, rather than places to educate citizens, acculturate people, and stimulate the ability to think for one's self."

Acculturation had better happen a Hel of a lot sooner than in university, what are you folks tripping on, for Gawds sake? And please do not regale us all with this continuous choking on things being dictated by the marketplace! It is not about the general stuff, which is simply underlying the other stuff and always present, but about the first undertaking in the first school we ever hit being that of learning how to learn, and the rest
will follow.

It is about not treating everyone who hits the u of something like new inmates in some asylum and scrubbing them down and fixing them up, so they can be minimally civilized. It is about the SUBJECT MATTER, for crying out loud. Whether they know their Dickens or Stravinsky is not the business of the guy who is supposed to teach them architecture. Math is more important; just ask those ironworkers we all memorialize together... It is about not groping people's entire soul in order to teach them (sooo sorry) a profession or a trade, and it is about getting real and accepting that whatever acculturation people possess at age 21 will stay with them for life...they have their gestalt then - if we don't like it, that is a political matter and cannot be addressed with the individual.

DavidN

No David, you are right. It's often just like dropping in to the Chez Che Club circa 1969. A nostalgic and amusing blast from the past.

Eating the rich

Is a far more useful activity than eating the poor.

The rich tend to be more subtly marbled and tender.

The rich are lean

For real juicy fattiness you have to go lower-middle class. Pilates has really affected the tenderness of the elites.

Faculty are Partly to Blame

Stan makes a lot of good points about Wente's article and about struggling students more generally. Part of the reason that the attrition rate is so high, especially for first years, is that universities (the old ones, not the new ones) don't really give a rat's behind about teaching. (They will protest otherwise--but, believe me, it is not an important consideration for hiring or promotion.) Regular faculty don't want to go anywhere near first years (and certainly not anywhere near their papers) and shovel this work onto underpaid, overworked TA's and contract faculty. They also spend much time and energy trying to further reduce their already laughably light teaching loads. The main problem isn't corporatism, etc., but the culture of the professoriate itself. Our country gives millions of dollars each year to foster the kind of humanistic learning Stan wants to see, but far too little of it goes to actually helping the students.

university = mental workout

Critical thinking and culture are valuable assets for all citizens, allowing us to make decisions and participate in our community and in politics.
The university education refines these attributes and also presents enough bureaucratic challenges to prepare people for the frustrations of life/politics/the real world.
As a former student of the Philosophy department at Capilano (then College) who went on to UBC, I reacall the academic standards as being very high, prompting us students to work harder to achieve higher grades, and dare I say BECOME smarter?!

Education Inflation!

The last few lines of this article says it all... Capilano "University"? Laughable... Glorified community colleges that should now grant PhDs? If you spread your net too wide then you catch the junk fish as well. I'm afraid this is what you get when you elect barely-educated governments that are only concerned with achieving the highest post-secondary education "participation" rates.

One note: I very much doubt the accuracy of the statement "Canada's post-secondary participation rate, growing as it may be, is still behind that of Korea, Holland, Greece, Britain, New Zealand, France, Australia, Finland ... etc". The "real" universities in some of these countries (Korea, France and Finland) have entrance examinations that weed out the vast majority of applicants.

I fear, due to pseudo-universities and political "participation" rates obsession, that my Canadian PhD in Physics (from a real university) will be considered internationally as little more than a university-transfer equivalent (go and see the Capilano University website).

Great article

Very enjoyable read: Why indeed shouldn't a bus driver or plumber enjoy philosophy?

In a world that's increasingly complex, and driven by competitive market and political systems wherein the victors win by conning the ignorant, a broad education is more critical than ever. Everyone should continue learning past their teen years and we need to find more creative ways to compete with the distractions of popular culture in order to do that

Wente's assumptions about innate ability are the product of simplistic thinking (blame the poor woman's flawed university training?). Of course we're all different, but as the parent of a student with autism, my mind has been blown wide open about what students can achieve with intensive support. And with all those different types of intelligence, there are many different pathways for teaching. Indeed, many of the students we used to think of as "not too bright" are in fact incredibly capable of learning; they just do so in different ways.

We need novel ways of teaching & appreciation of the potential attached to different learning styles. We need to stop pigeonholing kids and to get over the pop culture blame game. Kids will always be distracted by fun, but a good teacher can compete, especially when he/she is talking to students from a position grounded in their reality, instead of some reality that occured 30 years ago and that will never be as relevant to them as today's.