"Beat China!" Schools and the Global Economy
By Dan Jones & Azeem Hill
A key feature of any public education system is its purpose. Right now, a lot of people are putting forward the idea that the purpose of our schools is to prepare students to “compete in the global economy.” The proponents of this framework span the political spectrum, from Newt Gingrich to Barack Obama, but is it really the best thing for students?
First of all let’s take a look at the global economy. When we look around we see the gentrification of our neighborhoods for the sake of making Philadelphia a ‘world class city’, massive foreclosures on our neighborhoods across the country, and an economic recession that has left our families with no money while Wall Street bankers have made off with billions.
Secondly, what jobs are we going to be competing for exactly? According to Quintessential Careers, between 2002 and 2012 “the Labor Department expect[ed] more than 7.5 million new jobs in the 20 occupations with the largest growth [but] almost 6 million of those new jobs (accounting for 17 of the 20 largest growth occupations) require job-seekers with limited education and provide minimal training -- and are typically identified as low-wage jobs.”
Then there is the “competition” part. This framework dis-empowers students by prescribing for us what our goals and values should be. In order to take our place in the global economy, do we have to accept and align our attitudes with competition, extreme individualism, and a ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality? We now live in a world where it is easy to connect and build relationships with someone from the other side of the globe with a simple click of a button. Some of the language around competition encourages negative attitudes towards other students in other places who are dealing with the same issues we are.
Because of the rise of technology it is not possible anymore to hide the reality of other people around the world from our view. Instead of dehumanizing students from other countries, we are interested in seeing what we have in common with them and working together to increase respect for humanity.
The competition framework says that students are going to be competing for jobs, but if the global economy does not undergo some fundamental restructuring, there might not be many jobs left at all. We’ve lost 2 million jobs since the recession started 2 years ago, and many of those job losses have been classified as permanent. Everywhere on the news we hear about a “jobless recovery”. So the economy can bounce back and we still won’t be able to survive? Low wage workers, who make on average $7.09 an hour, make up 24% of the workforce, a number which is increasing.
So when President Obama says, as he did in a speech in Ohio on September 9, 2009, that “an educated workforce is essential for America to compete and win. . . if we want to out-compete the world tomorrow, we must out-educate the world today,” we are left with some questions: Is it better for students from across the country and the world to be competing for the same scarce jobs, or united to transform the structure that leaves so many of us incapable of meeting our needs? Should we simply become a part of the system, or should we be critically engaging it to make it truly work for us, instead of us for it?
On a much less abstract level, when we think of the reforms put forward by these proponents of the competition framework, a clear picture emerges: school closures and takeovers, students used as pawns so that adults can make profits off of curricula, testing, and management models, “drill and kill” and penal educational models designed to produce easy-to-control workers with basic skills, and a lack of respect for the voices of students, parents, teachers, and community members in what happens to their schools.
At the Philadelphia Student Union, we believe that a key piece of school reform is youth empowerment. Our definition of student success is one that empowers young people to be able to create the reality that we want to see for ourselves, our families and our communities. We do this through engaging in youth-led organizing work that includes campaign work, event planning, and media. Through this process students become heavily engaged in and committed to reclaiming our education, and gain essential tools and skills.
If our current education system is built around competition, then an alternative paradigm would be one built around collaboration. Instead of having us compete for grades, we could encourage cooperation. We, as students, feel more motivated when our goal is to help everyone not just ourselves. We can replace the traditionally oppositional relationship between students and teachers with one based on consensus and community building. Instead of having school districts and states competing against each other, we can work together across state lines to find genuinely new ways of thinking about education. Instead of having outside providers compete to run schools, we can engage communities in a collective process to transform their schools.
We strongly hope that everyone wants all students to succeed, but also recognize that there are different ideas about what success means, and that many of those ideas are counter to the interests of our students, our families and communities, and ignore the realities that we face. We live in a global society, and our education should prepare us to make the reality of citizenship in that society meaningful for every person, not just the lucky few.
This article was published in The Union Rep, Philadelphia Student Union's student-created newsletter. Download the latest issue of The Union Rep here.
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