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July 25, 2004

Booker T's Answer

I guess I've been flirting with the answer but perhaps it has been in front of me all this time and I've been ignoring it. Booker T. Washington has the answer, vocational school.

I have been recently extolling the virtues of the Second World. I've been considering the contradiction between equal standards across the board in public education and the economic reality of downscale communities. Darkstar says the choice is obvious and Booker Rising has trackbacked to the question.

So let me stand on a limb and say that vocational tracking is the way to go. If you grow up in a city with a big transportation hub, then a significant proportion of the high schools should be all about truck driving, logistics, container shipping, railroad piggyback systems, warehousing software, inventory systems, supply chaing, Kan Ban and all that rot.

Here's the objection and difficulty. The flow of global capital is very quick, and inaudible to lots of Americans - especially to socialists and teacher's unions. If we are to establish vocational schools, we need some reasonable guarantee that a middle class income is forthcoming in those vocations, otherwise we undermine the premises of free public education. If we hedge our bets, then all we'll be producing are butchers, bakers and candlestick makers and devaluing the labor market. So what happens if the transportation hub moves two counties away?

It may not be that way. There may be some industries (and I guess I picked the one) where it's not so easy to rip up and move offshore. I mean nobody is ever going to replace the Long Beach Harbor or the Burlington Northern. And as I said, there's always work at FedEx. However our relative amounts of trade with the Pacific Rim might decline.

But this necessitates that our educational system is as fast as global capital. It needs to be accellerated to adopt as quickly as the world it trains students for changes. We can do this. First step, get rid of the SAT.

Posted by mbowen at July 25, 2004 12:42 PM

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Posted by: DarkStar at July 25, 2004 08:13 PM