Jonathan Zimmerman: Education prepares for work and citizenship
[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University.]
Hey, kids, study hard! The job you save may be your own.
So said President Obama during his recent rousing speech to a joint session of Congress, noting that more than three-quarters of our fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school degree.
Obama, quite admirably, is putting his money where his mouth is. His proposed budget includes $46.7 billion for education - a 13 percent hike from last year - mostly devoted to expanding access to college.
As an educator myself, I should be elated: Education is suddenly "hot" again. But Obama's speech left me cold, too, by casting education in purely vocational terms - as a route to better-paying work. He omitted its other important role: to unite us as citizens. Especially when times get tough, we need schools to bring us together.
That's why Horace Mann called them "common" schools, after all. Pleading with antebellum Americans to establish state systems of education, Mann and other reformers stressed social integration.
"I want to see the children of the rich and poor sit down side by side on equal terms, as members of one family - a great brotherhood," a Mann ally wrote in the 1830s. Unless the young nation developed closer "bonds of sympathy," he added, it would be "rent asunder by distrust, envy, and all hateful passions."
Most of all, schools needed to teach Americans how to govern themselves, reformers argued. Regardless of future occupation, everyone was going to become a citizen. So everyone should learn the skills and habits of democratic life: reason, tolerance, and mutual respect.
To be sure, schools could prepare people for work and citizenship. But, as John Dewey reminded us, writing 70 years after Mann, there is a tension between the two goals. One is economic, oriented toward personal mobility and advancement; the other is social, highlighting our shared duties and responsibilities.
And when we stress education for occupation, ironically, we also risk holding people back. If the job of school was simply to ready people for jobs, Dewey warned, so-called manual workers wouldn't require much schooling at all. By putting them on vocational tracks, we put a virtual ceiling on how far they could go.
"The dominant vocation of all human beings at all times is living - intellectual and moral growth," Dewey wrote in 1916. "To predetermine some future occupation for which education is to be a strict preparation is to injure the possibilities of present development."
But that's precisely what happened. Just as Dewey predicted, our schools became enormous sorting machines, separating the so-called white-collar workers from the blue-collar ones. Are you going to become a doctor or lawyer? Then the college-prep track is for you. A factory laborer? Take a few vocational classes or simply drop out of school - and start laboring.
But today, as Obama correctly emphasized, it's much harder to get a job with decent pay without formal education. "In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity; it is a prerequisite," Obama said.
He went on to urge every American to commit to at least one year of higher education or career training. In the future, it would seem, we all will wear white collars to work.
But we won't, of course. And that's the elephant in the classroom. America will always need someone to pick up the trash, bus the tables, and pave the roads. What will become of these people in the brave new world of knowledge? And, most of all, what will our schools do for them?
If we think of education strictly in vocational terms, the answer is pretty obvious: nothing. You don't need formal schooling to become a busboy. But you do need it to become a citizen.
So, even as our schools prepare more and more people for the knowledge economy, let's also make sure that they teach us how to think and care about each other. Someone is going to lose in the great vocational sweepstakes, that's for sure. The only question is what the rest of us will do about it.
Hey, kids, study hard! The job you save may be your own.
So said President Obama during his recent rousing speech to a joint session of Congress, noting that more than three-quarters of our fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school degree.
Obama, quite admirably, is putting his money where his mouth is. His proposed budget includes $46.7 billion for education - a 13 percent hike from last year - mostly devoted to expanding access to college.
As an educator myself, I should be elated: Education is suddenly "hot" again. But Obama's speech left me cold, too, by casting education in purely vocational terms - as a route to better-paying work. He omitted its other important role: to unite us as citizens. Especially when times get tough, we need schools to bring us together.
That's why Horace Mann called them "common" schools, after all. Pleading with antebellum Americans to establish state systems of education, Mann and other reformers stressed social integration.
"I want to see the children of the rich and poor sit down side by side on equal terms, as members of one family - a great brotherhood," a Mann ally wrote in the 1830s. Unless the young nation developed closer "bonds of sympathy," he added, it would be "rent asunder by distrust, envy, and all hateful passions."
Most of all, schools needed to teach Americans how to govern themselves, reformers argued. Regardless of future occupation, everyone was going to become a citizen. So everyone should learn the skills and habits of democratic life: reason, tolerance, and mutual respect.
To be sure, schools could prepare people for work and citizenship. But, as John Dewey reminded us, writing 70 years after Mann, there is a tension between the two goals. One is economic, oriented toward personal mobility and advancement; the other is social, highlighting our shared duties and responsibilities.
And when we stress education for occupation, ironically, we also risk holding people back. If the job of school was simply to ready people for jobs, Dewey warned, so-called manual workers wouldn't require much schooling at all. By putting them on vocational tracks, we put a virtual ceiling on how far they could go.
"The dominant vocation of all human beings at all times is living - intellectual and moral growth," Dewey wrote in 1916. "To predetermine some future occupation for which education is to be a strict preparation is to injure the possibilities of present development."
But that's precisely what happened. Just as Dewey predicted, our schools became enormous sorting machines, separating the so-called white-collar workers from the blue-collar ones. Are you going to become a doctor or lawyer? Then the college-prep track is for you. A factory laborer? Take a few vocational classes or simply drop out of school - and start laboring.
But today, as Obama correctly emphasized, it's much harder to get a job with decent pay without formal education. "In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity; it is a prerequisite," Obama said.
He went on to urge every American to commit to at least one year of higher education or career training. In the future, it would seem, we all will wear white collars to work.
But we won't, of course. And that's the elephant in the classroom. America will always need someone to pick up the trash, bus the tables, and pave the roads. What will become of these people in the brave new world of knowledge? And, most of all, what will our schools do for them?
If we think of education strictly in vocational terms, the answer is pretty obvious: nothing. You don't need formal schooling to become a busboy. But you do need it to become a citizen.
So, even as our schools prepare more and more people for the knowledge economy, let's also make sure that they teach us how to think and care about each other. Someone is going to lose in the great vocational sweepstakes, that's for sure. The only question is what the rest of us will do about it.