What role can education play in this?

These issues are significant for education in light of the question John Abbott asked the group in Jakarta. “Education for what? “What sort of future do we want to prepare our children for?” In a discussion I had with a couple of teachers from the Jakarta International School (JIS) it was pointed out that somehow developing countries have to come up with a balance between the needs of a rapidly changing economy they often don’t control, increased political freedom, and the cultural values and traditions they want to protect. The answers worked out for these questions, it was recognized, would greatly influence the solution to the question “education for what?”

Yet, one teacher I met on the bus between JIS and the hotel argued that the question “education for what” is just as significant for rich nations as well. He shared that he had brought his family to a school in South East Asia from the United States because he felt much of America had traded in family and community for personal gain. Not by choice, but rather as an unintended consequence of a singular focus on economic growth and personal opportunity. He lamented that many of his friends in the States rarely have time for their kids, let alone for extended family. Cross-generational dialogue is an increasing rarity.

Things like a grandfather slowly inducting a grandson into a way of family life that’s hundreds of years old. “That all seems kind of quaint, and far removed from our reality.” He continued, “People are just too caught up in trying to make enough money to raise their kids the way society says they should be raised. What are the rules of the game? You have got to start saving money for the kids’ college education before they even enter grade school, and we have to do this while we worry about saving enough for our retirement. It’s simply our of control.”

In conclusion, as fate would have it the issue of “education for what?” in an increasingly globalized society came home to me most clearly during my trip back to the United States from Jakarta. I had a two hour layover in Frankfurt so I purchased a copy of The Financial Times. On the front page was an article about President Clinton being “attracted” to an argument made in George Soros’ book (The Crisis of Global Capitalism). Soros, billionaire financier with a guilty conscience, writes that the speed in which speculative capital has been withdrawn from countries that the global market feels jittery about has exacerbated the pain of places like Indonesia. (At one point in 1994, more than half the total inflow of capital to US mutual funds went into emerging-market funds). Consequently, Soros, among others, is calling for a sort of transnational Federal Reserve as a lender of last resort.

As I read this the following questions came to mind – are Americans, who have been pouring money into high return mutual funds in order to, among other things, pay for their kids’ college education and their retirements, part of the problem in terms of Indonesia’s collapsing economy and subsequent social chaos? Has our expectations for continued annual returns of 20 to 30 percent encouraged our mutual fund managers to seek high returns – bailing out in mass at the first scent of an economic slowdown – regardless of the human damage wrought by such short-term speculative investments on developing countries?

Education for what? What kind of world do we want for our children? Does educational policy thinking ever go beyond economic imperatives?

(For a terrific set of links to information on the Asian financial crisis, try this New York University site.)

Footnote to Apprenticeship on Page One

According to John Abbott’s presentation traditional Apprenticeship recognized four stages. Children are born inquisitive, and if initially fascinated by some mighty works, they do not find it difficult to practice whatever subtasks are first needed. The first stage involves and older person modeling a subtask, so that the learner sees the significance of this to the final product. Such “Cognitive Apprenticeship” progressively built new skills onto earlier basic skills, and took for granted that skills once learnt and subsequently practiced were something that the individual learner would then assume full responsibility for themselves. Busy adults, in such essentially subsistence cultures, had only the time and energy to provide scaffolding, the second stage, for those tasks in which the learner was still uncertain. As the learner’s confidence increased so the third stage – that of the “fading” of support – came into play, and the earlier scaffolding was progressively removed. The more proficient the learner became, the more they became independent of the teacher. Throughout this process there was a fourth critical stage, that which the human race is incredibly good at doing – namely endless talking – “dialogue.”

Pages: 1 2

More articles by Terry Ryan