Our Educational System Is Failing America

The jobs are there. In some cases the jobs are going begging. Companies have job openings, but the American educational system has not provided candidates who can do them. Who’s failing now?

Perhaps we owe it to Common Core. This misguided billionaire-funded concoction does not prepare students to do the well-paying jobs. Perhaps it’s because the curriculum teaches to a test. Perhaps it’s because the curriculum, especially the math portion, is incoherent and unintelligible.

If America is suffering through a strange situation where employers cannot find qualified candidates to do today’s jobs, perhaps we should lay some of the blame on the billionaire proponents of Common Core, along with their so-called experts.

The jobs going begging are not in the arts and psychology. They are technical. They involve doing stuff and making stuff. They are more likely to involve robots. True enough, girls can work with robots, but, in your experience who is more likely to play with robots and who is more likely to play with dolls?

You do not need very many little gray cells to figure that one out.

But, the educational establishment is, Christina Hoff Summers has argued, at war with boys. It wants them to be in touch with their feminine sides. This means less rote learning, less rigorous competition, more storytelling and more getting in touch with feelings. They do not, of course, disparage math, but they think that what really matters is not whether they get the right answer, but how the children feel about their math. Besides, rigorous competition would divide students into good and bad, better and best. And this would undermine the self-esteem of all the delicate snowflakes who know how to march in the streets, but who do not know how to run an assembly line.

The Wall Street Journal addressed the problem in an editorial and a news story.

From the editorial:

These macro-numbers are consistent with what we keep hearing from CEOs of large and small businesses around the country. They have openings but finding workers with the right skills who can pass a drug test isn’t easy.

This week Gregory Hayes of United Technologie sand Andrew Liveris of Dow Chemical stopped by the Journal, and both said they have or will have thousands of job openings for skilled technicians that pay a healthy middle-class wage with benefits. Both companies already devote enormous resources to training and retraining their employees, but the U.S. education system isn’t preparing young people to take many of these higher-skill positions.

The Journal recommends more apprenticeship programs. This would mean that our nation will need to overcome its notion that everyone should go to college and should study liberal arts:

All of this underscores the need for more state and local apprenticeship and skill certification programs that can help workers meet these opportunities. A national certification standard that can apply across state lines would also help worker mobility, which has been declining. President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions may not want to hear this, but the labor shortage also underscores the need for more legal immigration for guest workers.

In the Journal news story, Peter Witting explains that German manufacturers running factories in America have had to train their employees. Said employees, the products of America’s educational system, lack the technical skills to run today’s automated factories.

Germany does not have this problem, because German high schools offer vocational and technical education that prepares children for the jobs that are on offer. America does not. Yet, does America have enough high school teachers who can do this work? How many high school teachers would be able to prepare students for the jobs that are available?

Wittig reports:

In Germany, half the graduates of high schools and junior high schools choose a track that combines training on the job with further education at a public vocational institution. This apprenticeship model is one reason why Germany has the lowest rate of youth unemployment in Europe and has been able to keep manufacturing jobs in the country.

And also,

As high-wage countries, Germany and the U.S. face similar challenges in protecting existing production facilities and creating new manufacturing jobs. One of the most decisive factors for companies is whether they can find skilled and motivated workers, which is what apprenticeship programs provide.

This means that not everyone goes to college. It means that a significant number of people do not really need a liberal arts education. One understands that many colleges offer engineering programs, but you do not need to have a degree in engineering to be an effective technician. Many people who could do good work as technicians would not be able to complete an engineering problem.

Worse yet, we have decided that education must be therapeutic. We want our children to have high self-esteem. We do not want them to learn to compete. We give everyone a trophy, regardless. And yet, as happens with sports teams, self-esteemist policies have no place on the factory floor.

And it is inefficient to hire people who will fulfill diversity quotas.  Surely, in training programs everyone should have a fair chance. And everyone should be judged by the same standard.

For some people the worst part about all of these jobs is that they are man jobs. True enough, women can do many of them, but the skills and aptitudes required seem more likely to belong to men. Those who imagine that robots will replace men and that the masculine ethos will fade into oblivion are discovering that someone has to design those robots, manufacture and run them. Women can do a lot of these jobs, but for the most part they do not want to do such jobs. Thus, the task befalls men.

College men tend to major in engineering while college women major in art history and psychology. What more do you need to know.

Wittig tells about a a South Carolina worker who is finishing her training with Siemans:

Maria Puckett was working at an auto body shop when a friend told her about an interesting option in her hometown of Spartanburg, S.C. The German car maker BMW was looking for apprentices. Maria, an energetic 25-year-old with a passion for technical work, applied for the job. She was hired and after two years is almost done with her apprenticeship. Her professional future looks bright, and she has no college debt.

A woman working in an auto body shop. Perfect. More power to her. And yet, a nation that wants everyone to receive a trophy and that wants men to get in touch with their feminine sides will soon have precious few men who even want to do the jobs. For now our educational system is not providing what industry needs. Thus, economic growth will remain sluggish, regardless of policy.