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by: JosephN.Abraham,M.D.
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A new concept emerging in many communities is the idea that the primary goal of education is to produce better workers. Our schools should support our economy. As might be expected, the people advocating such an approach tend to be employers.

It is not clear that this strategy is the best. One question that immediately emerges is, What job are we training our students for? The "Did You Know" video that is popular on the Internet points out that the average worker will hold about a dozen jobs before the age of 40. So if we are training a workforce, for what job are we training them? And how could we ever train them for that many different jobs?

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that training workers for only one job was a reasonable approach. How will they deal with constantly-changing skills that every job now requires? Consider the lowest-paid, minimally trained worker in any company. More and more, all employees have to be able to work with computer programs, train on new machinery, and handle equipment and chemicals that will often carry risks to the workers or the public. Then consider that as our students move into higher slots in the organization chart, that the quantity of skills, and the rate of change, will enlarge at ever-faster speeds. So by training students for just one job, that one job is a endless learning quest. So we see that with this approach, we have lashed ourselves to a lifetime of expensive continuing education for all employees. Unless employees are capable of learning on their own. And that gives us one clue here.

After we consider those problems, we will also have to decide whether each student will become a manager, or an employee? Management necessarily deals with many data from many disciplines, and requires the ability to synthesize the information. Moving down the corporation ladder, skill sets become narrower, less independent, and more focused on rules and details. Look around any corporation, and it becomes quite clear that there was no way to predict who would become a manger, and who would become an employee. So if we train leaders, followers will be poorly trained; and obviously, the reverse is equally true. This gives us a second insight.

Next, we need to ask how it is that citizens, with moderate private income, should pay taxes to produce workers for corporations, which have very large budgets? If commerce needs to train workers for the corporation, private individuals should not pay taxes to support this.

Which bring up a deeper ideological question. The corporation almost always argues for less government, for lower taxes, and for privatization of everything possible. Given that, why should corporations now insist that government pay to train workers? if privatization is the superior strategy, here is a perfect opportunity for corporations to prove it. Is business arguing for workforce development simply to avoid the costs? If so, it appears that business has subjugated concerns for education to the desire for someone else to pay the costs. If corporations bear the costs, then by their own arguments, the pressures of the free market will produce the best solutions. This approach does not move us toward our conclusion, but it does expose a major flaw in this sort of thinking.

Workforce development is also at odds with the tenets of the democracy. Consider for a moment that workforce development is what totalitarian regimes target (and we must remember, poorly-run businesses can be eerily similar to totalitarian regimes). The last thing an oppressive organization-- government, corporation, or church-- wants, is thinkers. Highly centralized organizations do not want hard questions asked by their minions, they do not want workers who will question the status quo. All manner of dictators want mindless workers, who will tacitly and faithfully serve the desires of the leadership. The needs of the dictator vs. the needs of the democracy is the last clue, and points up more than anything the problem of equating education to workforce development.

This is because the concept that education should exist to train workers is much too low of a target for a healthy democracy. It is said that in America, any child can grow up to be President. This is not entirely accurate, because in America, EVERY child grows up to be President. When our citizens step into the ballot box, they each become our Head of State; we all run the country.

There is an irony here. Socrates warned us of the danger when all hands control the ship of state; in fact, it is from Socrates' warning that we receive the idea that government is a ship. But his fear has been proven wrong: democracy turned out to be the great strength of America. It is when all of us decide together, that we are the strongest.

This only holds, however, if the citizens are independent-minded equals. In the poor, undereducated nations, democracy dies; it only flourishes where there is a thinking populace who understand the long-term obligations and implications of their choices.

Seeing these things, we can understand that training our children for jobs is not the answer, not at all. Vocational preparation is insufficient for the democracy. Democracy absolutely must have discerning citizens who have a grasp of multiple complex disciplines. As do our neighborhoods, our churches-- and our businesses.

We should not be educating a workforce; we should be educating a citizenry. We should be educating a population who have a grasp of history, economics, the sciences, and particularly, a grasp of the many complex cultures of the world. America is at war in two countries, and though the country is divided on the necessity and management of those wars, it is clear to everyone that grave errors were committed because we did not understand the history and the cultures we were dealing with. Since we cannot possibly prepare our citizens for every eventuality that might arise in our nation's future, we should also educate a population who will continue to educate themselves throughout life.

We need citizens who are flexible and broadly educated, who have a grasp of how science and history and literature and traditions commingle to produce cultures, communities-- and citizens and nations. And yes, the citizen will also be able to hold a job; but she will also be able to hold down many different jobs, because she will be able to quickly learn and re-train herself to the accelerating changes in the modern market.

And after we have graduated our citizen-employee, she will move into a workforce managed by other such citizens, who understand that every worker, and every customer, are also broadly educated, and who each supply important opinions and vantage points. These new-age managers will then weave the divergent viewpoints into a more accurate picture of the world around them, and make better decisions. So the business of the future will look less and less like the autocracies that America was designed to replace, and will look more and more like the democracy our Founders designed to replace them.

We do not need workers, at least not first. We need independent-minded citizens, critical thinkers, fast re-learners: in our community, in our political process, and in our businesses. If we train employees rather than voters, then government and communities will fail, and business will fail with them.

But if we train citizens, all will prosper.

About the Author

Joseph N. Abraham, MD, is president and founder of APSE, The American Public School Endowments, and booksXYZ.com, The Non-profit Bookstore. He wrote the book Happiness.

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