Just because our new, big business schools will be educating our kids in Mexico does not mean that these won’t be American schools. We can have the Mexicans brand “Made in America” on each of the children so as to make it clear who they are. This will make reintegrating our children back into our country once they are educated much easier.
The problem of the laid off teachers and what they will mean to our economy remains. Remember, those who can do, and those who can’t teach. Perhaps these teachers could be deported. Or maybe we could send them to America’s number one employer—Walmart. They could work in the low-level jobs vacated by students: burger flipper, grocery bagger, paperboy, lemonade stand clerk and whatnot. When is the last time you had a grocery bagger quote Shakespeare or discuss the outcome of the Hundred Years’ War?
To prevent a collapse in the video game industry, we could send Halliburton, Bechtel Group Inc., Fluor Corp., Halliburton, Louis Berger Group Inc., Parsons Corp. and Washington Group International Inc. to Mexico to build up the infrastructure to support video game consoles and internet gaming in every student dwelling. Most assuredly, these companies would make sure that taxpayers get their money’s worth.
We should also look to Enron, Adelphia and Worldcom as worthy models. A school that is having difficulties in producing an educated product can always cook the books to make it seem like kids are learning (and if they are stuck in Mexico, it will be difficult to verify this anyway). In fact, such a school could overstate results by inflating student successes and hiding student failures and dropouts (as Bush’s supposedly turned around Texas schools have been doing). These schools could take money intended for school materials and use it for off-the-book loans to administrators. How about secretly shipping the students to China, which will educate the children for half of what the Mexicans will charge? The savings could be issued to administrators in the form of bonuses that they clearly would deserve for having done such a cost-efficient job with their schools. The possibilities for corporate loopholes and stock market manipulations are endless.
Article comments
1 - Alison Philippe
It is not just K12 education that is affected by this trend to turn education into a business by governments. It permeates through to vocational education and training (VET) in such countries as Australia, UK, and Europe.
I enjoyed your article very much. In Australia business determines and writes training packages, via skills councils for their various industries. These training packages set the standard for what has to be delivered by trainers (paraprofessionals) and teachers (professionals).
A recent survey of employers in Australia revealed that they were still not satisfied with the VET system. According to the survey VET institutions are still not teaching enough practical skills.
It seems to escape them that there is theory (and knowledge) embedded in skills and it is the understanding of the theory and knowledge that allows learners or employees to adapt and transfer the skills learnt in one industry to new contexts and different industries.
There seems to be a general narrowing and dumbing down of vocational education and training which may, in the long run, prove detrimental to the individual, business, and the economy.
This idea that unregulated capitalism (in reality corporatism) is the solution to all things has been proved incorrect so many times that it is annoying that the myth still survives.