Your Money or Your Life

I'm not sure when a university education became about the ability to make more money and less about learning for learning's sake. It seems to me that originally, those that wanted to make money or just make things, took a trade or went into business for themselves because they had a natural aptitude for those things. It was only those who had a thirst for something 'more' or needed to know the 'why' of everything that went on to university. And everybody was okay with that arrangement. It wasn't perfect, as many a dreamer ended up as an electrician or administrative assistant because they couldn't afford the high cost of a university education and many a carpenter ended up a doctor because that's what his Dad did before him.
I suppose it was about the time those in business decided there might be good coin in education. About the time the economy became king over anything resembling common sense. About the time Michael Douglas proclaimed "greed is good." Then, a high school diploma became almost a worthless piece of paper, good only for work in retail or the fast food industry. Now, one degree wasn't enough to ensure a good position, you had to have two or three. And the money, oh, the money! Post secondary graduates and their parents staggered under the debt.I think of the huge pressure on teachers to push children far beyond their capabilities, resulting in an education system that resembles more of a fast-food industry (spoon it in, regurgitate out) rather than one that teaches children how to think. But in a society where the economy is the God we worship, thinking would be dangerous.
I think also of the crushing weight of all the adult expectations on a child who only wanted to build things or play music. I think of how many children crumbled under the pressure and ended their lives. And for what?
Here in my province, the 'economic engine' in Canada we ended up having to import workers from abroad because we didn't have enough skilled trades to build the oil sands. There was a huge push in the last couple of years to attract kids to the trades. And now? Now that the boom has gone bust? Everybody is in the same position, whether you're the kid who dropped out of high school or the guy with the double degree in engineering and business. The great levelling.
I would guess those that are doing the best in this economy are those who took a more liberal arts education despite the pressure to go into something with a specific job at the end of it. The ones who know how to think and the ones who understand that money isn't everything. Who could see what lay ahead and have the ability to adapt and change. In fact I remember reading several articles in recent years suggesting that indeed it was these graduates who were becoming most valued by corporations.
To me, education in this complicated world needs to become less about what to learn and more about how to learn. Thanks to the many great minds in our world we now have incredible tools for learning and educators can become guides along the information highway rather than desperatley trying to cram more and more information into kid's heads. Education needs to be less about pushing children into pigeon holes and more about allowing them to discover what they are innately good at and then allowing them to pursue that with total support and respect. We need to get to a place in our world where we give the same respect to a janitor who takes pride in keeping a building scrupuously clean as we do a nuclear physicist.