Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ What if we connected education to the needs of our economies?

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

I think a lot about why we are teaching as well as about what we are teaching and of course how we are teaching. This post suggests (as we have so often heard before) tying education to the economy. Education, writes Efosa Ojomo, is depicted as a means to gain employment and climb the economic ladder, but "we see, time and time again, is that when education is disconnected from the needs of the economy, this promise falls flat." But what are, I ask, the needs of the economy? For Ojomo, it means "strengthening the connection between schools and employers." But to the employers, the economy succeeds when there is surplus labour and low wages. It succeeds when people don't really have a choice but to accept whatever job they're given, at whatever wage they're offered. The best education helps people be independent of the economy, so that when it fails (as it always does) the people will survive.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: Apr 20, 2024 03:47 a.m.

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