Doomsaying again for this week, but we did have a little bit of news on the education front. The department is rolling out the initial tests for a new curricular system, one that’s intended to pave the way forward to the brave new world.
Of course, cynic that I am, I latched onto a few key parts in that little briefer. First, was that they are removing two of the academic tracks—arts and sports—and second, they are doing this to sort of respond to the labor market and its needs.
I was discussing this with a close friend and my neurons misfired a bit, reminding me of a snippet of one of my favorite comic books, Final Crisis (penned by the one and only Grant Morrison). In part of the plot, the world falls under the anti-life equation, which is essentially just a plot device that saps free will out of people.
Morrison is not particularly subtle about his morality and beliefs, and it is extremely easy to read his depiction of anti-life, where all under it become mindless slaves that possess only malice and function only to obey the whims of evil, and where, in that particular story, they are all depicted as horrible creatures that only work round-the-clock, without pause, to feed the war machine, as a criticism of capitalist society being evil.
Anyway, I myself am not particularly good at these sorts of readings, and the reason I bring it up is because lines from that series immediately popped into my mind when I saw the rationale as aligning learners with the needs of the labor market.
I myself am a product, to some extent, of this philosophy, as are the generations before us, and those that’ll come after.
Ever since global society sorted itself into this shape, there has been no shedding the yoke.
Think back to when you were growing up and entering school. Were you at some point asked what you wanted to be in the future, and it was always in the form of a desired occupation? (You were, and chances are your answer was something like lawyer, doctor, teacher, or nurse.)
It says something about the state of our world when we have to function under the assumption that education is intended to land you a job in a linear career that you will stick to for the majority of your working life.
As a product of this system, I don’t quite like it. I’ve always viewed education as something (that I’m not good at) where it should enrich your life more than it just provides you credentials to acquire a job. You should ideally come out of education with a sharper mind and a finer appreciation for life.
