Who needs Education?

The question is of course rhetorical, we all know we need education. The debate that has continued to rage over the past four hundred years is what form this education should take. Should it be practical, about life skills, or academic, exploring the furthest reaches of human endeavour.

For me the issue is simple. Industry is best placed to know what it wants and needs from the workforce and pay for its training. It is for them to take the raw talent and turn them into the skilled operative best suited to their particular industry. It is not for government to best guess their ever changing needs and skills expectations. We do need a new take on the old apprenticeship model however. It needs to be a lot more inclusive and wider ranging. For example the building industry now needs operatives that have a background understanding of working with concrete, steelwork, masonry and carpentry and all their associated specialist tools and equipment before specialising in their chosen trade. Likewise a machinist needs to develop the hand-eye coordination skills working with a range of materials from wood, plastics to specialist metals, at nanoscale through to massive and all the attendant specialist machine operations before further training in their chosen work area. That is for industry to fund and focus on.

Aside of that the Nation needs to develop its raw talent intellectually to the fullest extent possible, utilising all the available technology to encourage each young citizen to reach for their limits.

What we all have to face up to is the logarithmic expansion of the knowledge we have to encompass inorder to utilise our everyday skills. In any particular subject as the frontier of knowledge pushes ever forward, so the bandwidth of knowledge that has to be covered also increases. To make sense of a small specific item entails an absorption of a huge background of related information together with all its attendant sideways interrelated matter, necessary to make sense of, to fully understand and be able to manipulate the subject at hand. Subjects have not for some time been discrete packets that stand alone in isolation. Not for a long time is it sufficient to just learn by rote the times tables or the spelling-bee lists of words, life's complexities have broadened and spread out. We need to educate all of our citizens to the limits that they can reach for. That means galvanising and exciting our students to push on further and faster, grabbing every technological aid available. Yes there will be loss of precision at the small scale, faltering mental sums, grammatical or spelling errors. Better by far to reach forward knowing that life's harsh expediency will ensure these small scale loss of accuracy can and will be picked up later. The overriding challenge is to excite them to reach forward as only then are impossible targets suddenly attainable. That is what we so desperately need as a Nation . Every single student should be encouraged to reach for that limit, a university degree should be everyone's free birth right and expectation. For these citizens are our torch-bearers for all our futures and hopes. This has to be our single most important and vital investment into our Nation's future, without limitations of financial resource or fear of future debt or hardship. Without a proven provenience into a solid dependable life career. We simply need skilled citizens to cope with the incomprehensible complexities lurching just around the corner. The Nation and its citizens will have to fast on their feet and quick in mind to survive all of tomorrows great uncertainties. Invest upto the hilt in our stock, our citizens, now, as we just don't know what is coming next.

No better time than right now to redefine our education qualifications and notch them up a gear, expect more of everyone. I see more of an AO exam leading to a degree course similar in structure to a six-form college, acquiring the fundamentals, slowly focusing on the particular area of interest, but broad based, covering all the inter-related skills necessary to be an adroit citizen. Only then moving to a redefined University course with a much higher expectation in both input skills and output, say more of an upgraded Master, applying and extending a initial overview of a subject into a narrowly focused specialisation. These graduates would then leave with a degree of competence at the leading edge of their chosen subject. Our Nation will the beneficiary or not as these citizens use their new-found enthusiasm with perhaps some entrepreneurial flair thrown in to exploit and incidentally create wealth with their new found knowledge and skills. No guarantees of pay back to the Nation, but with such an uncertain future ahead and no clear path to follow this is our best chance of survival. One we must grasp it confidently and pool all our financial resources into it.