Should we dumb down Canada?

Once again, one of Margaret Wente's columns in the Globe and Mail has me scratching my head (It's our fault they can't grow up). In her column, Wente argues that we're "infatalizing" our children by coddling them and allowing them to pursue whatever harebrained scheme that comes into their heads. This includes one of her friends financing their daughter's online business and, when that fails, allowing her to live with them until she gets on her feet.

It also includes parents who support their kids while they pursue advanced degrees (beyond a BA). According to Wente this results in "a spectacular waste of human potential" as kids waste years "piling up more 'credentials' as they try to figure out what they really want to do and waiting for just the right self-actualizing opportunity to come along." What we need to do according to Wente is get them out into the "real world" earlier so that they can be doing "productive work". I wonder if she includes journalism as "productive work"?

By earlier Wente means in their teens. After all according to Wente, if George Washington could be out surveying Indian country at 16 and Roman boys were fighting at 14 years of age (I assume then that she's OK with all of the child soldiers being "recruited" to fight in Africa and elsewhere), then surely we should be able to put our kids out into the workforce at a much younger age (so she's also OK with child labour practices followed by China and many other Third World countries).

Using examples from hundreds and thousands of years ago is simply ridiculous. Society and business is much more complicated than then and the level of knowledge required to compete (not just function) is far greater. And with an increasingly educated and competitive global economy more comprehensive training will ensure that young workers are competitive when they are most prolific. Instilling a hunger for learning will also add longevity to their careers. And keeping people in the workforce and productive is becoming increasingly important as our workforce ages.

To bolster her argument Wente calls upon an "expert" from the only science potentially more dismal than economics -- psychology. Robert Epstein (whom we can assume wasted countless years pursuing a degree that adds little value to productivity or growth) has a new book to flog (The Case Against Adolescence) and a radical new theory -- that we need to pare down our education system to get children out into the workforce much earlier and therefore eliminate all of the horrors of adolescence (drugs and alcohol, peer pressure, the obsession with appearance, consumerism).

Epstein contends that "the modern education system was created in order to supply the factories of the industrial age with a reliable stream of standardized, skilled labour. Today, the Industrial Age is dead, and the factory system is obsolete. The knowledge that people need for most jobs is specialized and changes quickly. But we still educate our kids in the same old way."

While he does argue for lifelong education his contention is that we simply need to be innoculized with specialized training at various points along our career to address our changing circumstances. This is a purely rationalistic approach that attempts to reduce education to simple inputs and outputs. This new deterministic approach to education is the "cure" for this newly created disease of adolescence. Once innoculated, the outcome will be happier, more productive and more socially integrated citizens. And simply by taking new vaccines every few years we can innoculate ourselves agains the ravages of global competition.

Common sense says that this deterministic approach to learning can't work. It is the same approach we take in healthcare right now, where we spend more and more money treatment and nothing on prevention. We can't possibly create vaccinations to address all of the possible problems that may arise.

Education must give or children the tools and training they need to changing conditions and circumstances. Given the rate of change of change they will need more flexibility to respond. We need to teach our children how to learn. When they come through the education process they must be able to think critically and with imagination. They must have a hunger for knowledge that will last a lifetime. Only then will they have the tools they need to survive.

This cannot be learning by wrote and may take more time. Some will progress faster than others and may hit the workforce at a much earlier age (Bill Gates for example). Some later. My cousin for example, lingered in the education system into his 30s before finishing a PhD. He subsequently decided he wanted to teach at a high school level and so went back to spend more time expanding his credentials. Was it a waste of time? I don't think so. He is now one of a small group of highly skilled and motivated teachers dedicated to bringing quality education to students in a troubled North Toronto neighbourhood. If he had taken a faster path he may not have had the maturity he needed to commit to what is a difficult and at times dangerous job. Not to mention thankless.

Others may choose a less formal path. Regardless, we must support our children as they find their way. There will inevitably be mistakes. Mistakes are a fundamental part of the learning process. Trying to circumvent this process diminishes the quality of the individual.

Once trained they can then take responsibility for finding the right avenue to acquire new knowledge and learn new skills. Teaching them specific skills and then shoving them into the workforce will do none of this. It will make us less, rather than more competitive. Given that Canada's growth in industrial production and expenditures on research and development are lagging many developed and emerging economies, pursuing this course of action would be disastrous.