Education Reform LO9548

Rol Fessenden (76234.3636@CompuServe.COM)
28 Aug 96 00:57:06 EDT

Replying to LO9432 --

John, you said,

"There is something "wrong" with educating people for work, if educating
for work is all that is done, and for solely that purpose.

My bias as a generalist leads me to value education for the sake of
teaching people how to think, not what to think."

Also speaking as a generalist, I am in total agreement with you. Scott
Simmerman put it well in another posting. It would be worth rereading.

What I meant to say, is that we need to teach people how to think. That is
exactly what businesses need, is people who know how to think. Unfortunately, I
have a raft of people who cannot do that. They only seem to know what to think,
and much of it is off-base, and literally all of it prevents further learning.
It is extraordinarily, overwhelmingly, painfully sad. Sad far more for them
than for the business.

Most people, when they think of educating people for work, think of training
people for specific purposes. That is not what I mean, and interestingly, it is
not what any reasonable business person means. Listen to Gerstner (IBM),
Packard (HP), and others on education, and they all say the same thing. What
you said.

What I am actually railing about is the notion that somehow work is OUTSIDE of
scope for education. It is not. Last I knew, work was ennobling. It still is,
and we need to educate people to approach it well. As I said before in another
note, education should be approached as a partnership among employers,
governance, communities, and citizens, with educators as facilitators and
organizers.

Regards,

-- 

Rol Fessenden LL Bean, Inc. 76234.3636@compuserve.com

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>