| Published in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, Sunday, May 6, 2001
Education
must keep pace with change
By Robert D. Koob, president, University of Northern Iowa
It is common
now to speak of the "new economy," "information economy" or the "knowledge
economy." Seldom defined, it loosely refers to what happened to the
business world when it became clear that computing and communication
technologies made a difference in worker productivity.
Fundamentally, what has really evolved is the rate of change. As long
as we have been aware of the concept of an economy, it has been a knowledge
economy in some sense of the phrase. Each economic advance has been
the product of a new idea. Changing from a hunter-gatherer society to
an agricultural society, and from an agricultural society to an industrial
society were possible because new ideas made work more productive. Humans
reduced their survival dependence through a direct result of their own
labor, to dependence on labor agents such as animals, machines and electronics.
What humans have always brought to the mix is intelligence.
In the new economy, it is clearly more important to bring intellectual
tools, not physical tools, to the work place. This has created rising
expectations of our schools. As the pool of opportunities for those
that labor in the 19th- and 20th-century sense diminishes, and the pool
of opportunities for those who work with information and ideas increases,
we expect our schools to provide each student the tools to survive and
succeed in a rapidly changing world.
This is a reasonable expectation, but not one that can be accomplished
in isolation. Achieving such a profound shift in the world of work requires
the full participation of our society.
Ask any educator -- indeed, examine your own experience -- and you will
learn that a childŐs early life experiences shape the potential for
success in school. Yet Iowa finds itself in an odd circumstance for
early childhood experience.
Iowa is a high-employment state. Most parents work. And yet Iowa has
one of the least restrictive oversight codes for childcare in the nation.
Childcare does not equate to early childhood education.
It is frightening how little data exists about early childhood education
in Iowa. How many Iowa communities can provide information on the number
of childcare opportunities in that community? Can that same community
provide information on the educational character of those placements?
And what about life at home? How many communities can provide information
on the parental support school-age kids have at home? The support must
be fairly good or Iowa would not have such a good reputation as an education
state. Because good education depends on quality teachers and supportive
parents, Iowa must have a good share of both. Still, how many communities
consider it their responsibility to be certain parents have the time
to spend helping their children learn?
These are very difficult questions. They are not questions we are accustomed
to addressing. They seem to encroach on the privacy of the family, so
it has been much easier to blame schools when they do not meet our new
expectations of preparing every child for college. The fact is, however,
that no matter what kind of testing we do, no matter how many times
we might revise the curriculum, if we do not have well-qualified teachers
and a supportive home environment, we cannot meet these expectations.
The state has been blessed with a bountiful higher education system,
public and private, that has, by every measure, developed quality teachers
for many years. The state continues to show its concern for those teachers
by seriously considering its pay and standards for professional progression.
It is now time for each community to begin addressing the more difficult
question of the supportive home environment.
It is the responsibility of each community, and therefore each person
in that community, to make certain that every child has a safe place
to live. Recent news has shown us that we have not yet reached that
simple standard. If we are truly to prepare our children for the new
economy, we must go well beyond safety. We must provide our children
with places that stimulate their mental growth and protect their physical
bodies. Iowa has barely begun to address this enormous challenge.
The bottom line is that we are all responsible for schooling, from the
very earliest childhood education through college. If we are not happy
with the way our own expectations are being met, then we must seek solutions
together to the whole range of education.
|
