by Vishaal Kuruvanka
March 22nd, 2022

Scenario A

Imagine that you are running a business enterprise and you have 10 employees. These 10 employees have the basic skills to carry out the position they were hired for but lack the organizational knowledge and specific training/experience to carry out their individual tasks. What do you do with those 10 employees? You train them to do the job that you have hired them for. Assuming you have a decent business model, if you robustly train your employees then those employees will work efficiently and produce value for your business. As you look to expand your business, you hire new workers to help with the enterprise's growth. How do you train these new employees? One of the existing trained employees will train them. As this cycle continues and you begin to expand outside of your city and state, how will you train these employees effectively? Would it be effective to train workers differently in New York versus in Nebraska? Maybe if these different locations had different business focuses, but if each branch has the same functions then it will be highly inefficient, even detrimental. The best practice would most likely be to engineer a system that teaches the basic skills needed to perform the job while allowing regional managers to make adjustments according to their niches. The leadership of the company, namely yourself and your team, will set some broad guidelines on what the company’s goals are, how the employees are playing a role in reaching that goal and then the skills that are needed to carry out their tasks. The regional managers can then create a region specific training to get their employees up to speed on what is happening within the region, regional problems and what the current plan of action is to fix these problems. Ideally a national training followed by region specific activities will allow the employees to get trained and understand the broader picture of their role in the company. A company wide approach mixed with the localized adaptations is the best course of action. 

This example shows how private industry trains their workers. If we assume that our children are our future workforce, how should we make sure they are adequately educated to meet the demands of industry in the 21st century? As of right now, there is very little discussion or even planning on what subjects are the most important, what forms of education will best prepare our students for the 21st century and what type of individuals we want our students to become. Education shapes the minds of our people who are the bedrock of our economy, our democracy and our country and for the US to maintain its hegemonic power in this uncertain time period, we must look back to our roots and invest in what makes our country great, which is our people.

Following the example from above, if one now imagines our education system at the national level of the United States, where the task is to mold the minds of millions of young born and unborn Americans to allow them to grow in their own unique ways while also training them to positively contribute to society with their talents and gifts, what is the best path to accomplish a robust education? 

 Here too there must be a broad national policy that encompasses subject material and testing with local leaders deciding on how to approach these requirements. Currently, our education system operates like a disbanded business, ultimately working to attain the same goal of educating our students, while each area pursues this goal with their own prerogatives, some of which are a disservice to the true potential of Americans. Simply put, we have a united goal, but fragmented approaches. While this disbanded system was highly effective in the growing era of our country, it has increasingly shown that our system is not providing a high quality education for every student in the US. This highly dysfunctional system that exists within our country is long overdue for change. In this metaphor, if the US is seen as a business with the ultimate goal to serve as a beacon of opportunity and freedom, why would we not set overarching standards and goals that prepare students with the tools for their lifelong pursuits of liberty and success? I do not for a second believe that we cannot build such a system in the US with the talent and knowledge that exists here. First we must understand what a robust education looks like, what skills the workforce will need to thrive in the 21st century, what our current system looks like and how we may be able to solve this. This series is to explore our different options and lay out to the general public what the scope of the problem is and what our potential solutions could look like. The next example is on the singular level, playing out a scenario with a student.

 

Scenario B

Imagine 20 years ago, that a student has technical and creative qualities that could be useful in building a career, comparable to technical entrepreneurs seen through the information age boom. But because there are no nearby facilities that have computers or access to teachers that could guide and continue to pique the student’s interest, her skills never show themselves. How could she build upon that inkling of interest that she had? The closest computer was probably within the confines of a 100 miles but she has no way to reach it. She will continue to go to school, not only meeting the academic requirements but excelling in all accounts. But her state’s standards are much lower than compared to schools across the nation. This child’s early talent will go unfound simply because of the lack of resources and mentorship available to them. If the student had been exposed early enough, there is no obvious way to know the result but it can be assumed that the possibilities that are available to the child widen considerably. Because she has to wait until university, if she can afford it, to gain an understanding of computers and the information available on it, the unrealized progress is considerable to herself and the greater economy. 

This scenario plays on the fact that if one is born to well off parents, then you have a higher probability to succeed in life. Because of the resources that are available, the student is exposed to a wider array of subjects and walks of life. It is precisely this robust exploration of subjects that allow for an individual to find his or her true passion of life. The student also has the freedom to explore these different avenues, not burdened by the need to work to bring income for the family. Inequality is an economic problem that has real, far-reaching consequences on educational outcomes. One solution to this never ending poverty cycle within our country is to reignite the curiosity of our countrymen and women beginning with the education that they receive in public schools. A holistic solution to this pervasive economic cycle must have at its core methods to make educational exploration available to all, not just the monied class. A well functioning, efficient education system in this time of limitless information, will uplift all of our people by giving them the keys to access their innate skills and passions and this inturn will bolster their economic foundation. For the system to be cutting edge and work efficiently, the following recommendations, through a series of essays, will help propel the US to the next level and help maintain the country’s hold as a beacon of freedom and opportunity. 

The exploration and exposure of subjects must occur within the public education system akin to how universities work today. If all schools across the US offer a wide variety of explorative opportunities and access to teachers that are well versed with the subjects then the outcomes for these children multiply exponentially. Giving the freedom to our students to design their educational curriculum from a set of courses will allow them to build upon their greater interests quicker at no extra cost to them. However we design the system, we must give the greatest freedom to the student as this will aid in developing their maturity and lower the feeling of helplessness early on. For this to happen, the education that happens beginning with pre-k to middle school must be reorganized in the form of reducing unnecessary subjects and increasing academic standards. Students will always reach the standards that are imposed upon them in the classroom. I was always instructed to hold the accountability for my students at the highest levels and this pushed them to achieve those standards. I strongly believe that if we place our belief in the ability of our young people to succeed, then they will always rise to the challenge. This will be fully explored in the ‘design of education’ essay. 

Education is one of the chief bedrocks of a robust democracy and as our nation heads into a new era where technology is changing the world, we must look to equip our people with the tools necessary to be productive. To save our economy and democracy, education is the key. Looking from a structural level, because states offer education based on state level standards, students across the US in reality do not receive the same level of education due to inconsistency among states. A federal layer will help with increasing academic standards by maintaining an active vigil over the performance of our schools, offer a wider array of subjects through partnerships with public universities and ultimately exposing our youth to the plethora of avenues available to them. The government in this sense must assert a vigorous role in one of the chief needs of the country, which is essential to the continuation of its own government and democracy. The US government benefits tremendously when individual actors become productive citizens. The output of the productive citizen not only benefits the individual through feeling like they have contributed to something larger than themselves, but also the state as the output will inevitably play a role in another individual’s life. It is the nature of capitalism, that this productivity and prosperity will flow to all aspects of society and inevitably play some role in positively affecting other people’s lives. This series of essays will argue for a much needed reformation of our current education system and offer some possible solutions to our dormant and ineffective system. To buttress these arguments we begin with the purpose of education, a history of education within our country, examples of policy experimentation throughout US history, and what a new structure could look like. Let us start with the purpose.