With the new school year having just started, I got my usual picture of the granddaughters posing by their front door on the morning of the first day of school holding signs such as one can purchase at the store, with places to fill in the student’s name, the date, what grade she is entering, teacher’s name, etc. But I was especially amused at this year’s photo showing one of the granddaughter’s chosen future profession: ice cream taster.
Leaving
aside for now my disappointment at not having thought of that for my own career
choice many years ago, the picture launched me into deeper thought on the
subject of education. But it was not
just the picture but the fact that at the time I was reading Susan Engel’s
book, The End of the Rainbow: How Educating for Happiness (not money) Would
Transform Our Schools. Ms. Engel’s
thesis is that our schools have just become job training institutions, and she
argues persuasively that this is not the true and highest purpose of education
and does not foster a love for learning in our children. The rhetoric from the politicians, and even
the professional educators, gives her argument some credibility. How often have you heard them say, “we have
to prepare our children for the jobs of the future” or something along those
lines? Even our community colleges trend
more towards being job skills enhancement labs.
Engel
insists children need more free time, or play opportunities. She laments the ever-growing list of skills
and knowledge sets that must be taught in the schools. And the list grows ever longer as educators
are asked to incorporate curricula on anti-bullying, diversity, inclusion, anti-racism,
and a host of other cultural issues into their teaching time. When I worked in the field of organ donation,
there was even a push to have a mandatory lesson in schools promoting organ and
tissue donation. (I wrote to my state
senator thanking him for opposing the legislation. He, too, argued there was already too much on
teachers’ plates.)
What
is this push to “educate” our children actually accomplishing? A headline in the Wall Street Journal
last week proclaimed, “Schools spend billions on training so every child can
succeed. They don’t know if it
works.” Maybe what I heard in my car
yesterday on the public radio station gives a hint: in my home state the vast majority of the
school districts had LOWER scores this year on the standards of learning tests.
But
this blog is about money, so let me come back to the title of Engel’s book;
education at its best should not be about money. Yes, we all need a certain amount of money to
survive in this world; living in poverty is not conducive to happiness. Engel, only half in jest, suggested in her
book that we are overwhelming and even boring our kids in school to train them
for the overwork and boredom they will experience in the work world. But what if our children learned to love
reading and to love learning? What if
they learned how to learn without an instructor always over their shoulder? In other words, what if we showed them the
path to happiness through their own passion for learning instead of channeling
them to a certain career because of how much money they could make at it? With more and more surveys showing that
Americans measure their well-being by other metrics than money, perhaps we need
to align our educational efforts accordingly.
If my granddaughter can become an ice cream taster, learns all she can
about the frozen dessert, and is still passionate, fulfilled, and happy doing
it as an adult, even her Pop Pop will be happier.
Money is not
everything.
Until next
time,
“There are
different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the
same Lord. There are different kinds of working,
but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.” I Corinthians
12:4-6 NIV*
*Scripture
quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright
© 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
