“Current systems of education were not designed to meet the challenges we now face. They were developed to meet the needs of a former age. Reform is not enough: they need to be transformed.”

ACADEMIC INFLATION

I WENT TO COLLEGE IN 1968. I did not look then as I look now. I was not the suave sophisticate that you will find on my website. I was deep into Led Zeppelin and, visually at least, I was channeling the lead singer, Robert Plant. I had shoulder-length hair, wore jeans and a torn combat jacket, and was almost dangerously attractive to women. That was certainly my impression. I was 22 and considering my options. Should I get a job? Not yet, I thought. There was no rush. At that time, college graduates were virtually guaranteed a decent job and it did not matter much what their degree was in. It could have been in Old Norse and it often was. Employers would still snap them up. “You can speak Viking,” they’d say, “come and run our factory: your mind is honed to a fine edge.”

When I graduated, if you had a degree and didn’t get a job, it was probably because you didn’t want a job. I did not want a job. I wanted to “find myself.” You could do this in the 1970s. I decided to go to India, where I thought I might be. As it happens I didn’t get to India, I got to London (where, to be fair, there are a lot of Indian restaurants). I knew that when I wanted a job I could get one, and soon enough I did. A college degree was a passport to a good professional position. Nowadays, college graduates have no guarantee of a job and those who do find work do not expect to be with the same company for long, or even that the company will be around for that long either.

There are many good reasons for gaining academic qualifications. Studying for them should be inherently worthwhile and the best programs are. Academic qualifications are also a form of currency: they have an exchange rate in the marketplace for jobs or higher education. Like all currencies, their value can go up or down according to market conditions and how much currency is in circulation. University degrees used to have a high market value in part because relatively few people had them. The growth in population and the expansion of the “knowledge economy” have led to unprecedented numbers of people going to college. In the 1970s, about one in twenty people went to college. The current target is one in three, rising to one in two. As a result, the market value of degrees is tumbling. Something more is needed to edge ahead of the crowd. Jobs that used to require only a first degree are now asking for masters’ degrees, or even doctorates.

Several years ago, I was on a university appointments panel. I asked the chairman of the panel what we were looking for in the candidates. He mentioned the various qualities and qualifications that were essential for the job and then he said, “I think we’re also looking for someone with a good PhD.” I said, “As opposed to what? A dreadful one?” He meant a PhD from a high-ranking university. There was a time when, if you had a PhD, you were in a tiny fraction of the population. All PhDs were regarded with reverence. Now, we’re getting picky. We want “good” PhDs. What’s the next twist on this spiral? Nobel Prizes? Will we eventually see Nobel Laureates applying for clerical jobs and being told, “OK, you’ve got a Nobel Prize, that’s lovely. Can you also handle Excel? We need someone to sort out the payroll.”

The assumption is that by expanding education and raising standards all will be well. The end game assumes that when everyone has a PhD, there will be a return to full employment. There will not. The markets will reconfigure as the currency rates fall and employers will look for something else. They’re doing this already. The issue is not that academic standards are falling. The foundations upon which our current systems of education are built are shifting beneath our feet.

TWIN PILLARS

We now take it for granted that governments should provide mass systems of education; that they should be funded from the public purse; that all young people should go to school until they are at least 16 and that a high proportion of them should go on to college. As obvious as they may seem now, these assumptions are relatively new.¹ It was only from the 1860s onwards that countries throughout Europe, as well as many of the American states, began to establish mass systems of public education. The history of state education everywhere is an intricate tapestry of economic needs, philanthropic passions, competing movements of social reform and wildly divergent philosophical convictions. Even so, there were some common driving forces.

Pre-industrial societies were dominated by the old aristocracies and the churches, which presided over largely illiterate, poor rural populations. Before the 1860s, the vast majority of Europeans were still illiterate. Only Prussia, some of the other northern German states and the Scandinavian kingdoms boasted widespread literacy.² The spread of industrialism generated surging streams of new wealth and a new and ambitious social force: the middle classes. Education was the road to social improvement and economic opportunity. Public education evolved around the interests and ambitions of the middle classes; not only for themselves but also for the industrialized societies they were helping to create. Industrial expansion provided the resources to pay for it all.

As millions of workers migrated from the countryside to the cities, to stoke the fires of industrialism in the factories and shipyards, a third social group began to take shape: the urban working classes. For some pioneers of mass education, schools were a way to raise the aspirations of the working classes and to lift them out of poverty and despair. Others saw it as the best way to promote the values and opportunities that are meant to lie at the heart of healthy democracies. In the United States, Horace Mann saw mass education for all as the natural fulfillment of the principles of the Constitution. Others were less idealistic and saw it as the most efficient way of inculcating the working classes with the habits and disciplines of industrial production. Some argued that it was a waste of public resources to attempt to educate the children of the working classes: such children were essentially uneducable and would not benefit from these efforts. They were wrong about that. Others feared that educating the working classes would give them ideas above their station and lead to a social revolution. They were not wrong about that.

State-supported elementary schools sprang up throughout Europe from the mid-1800s: in Hungary from 1868; Austria from 1869; England from 1870; Switzerland from 1874; the Netherlands from 1876; Italy from 1877; and Belgium from 1879. They grew too in the United States. According to Gerald Gutek, by the time of the Civil War, “the common school movement had accomplished its aim of achieving popular systems of elementary schools in most of the states. After 1865, schools were established in the southern states. As various new states entered the Union, they too established common elementary school systems.”³

From the outset, mass systems of education in Europe and North America were designed to meet the labor needs of an industrial economy based on manufacturing, engineering and related trades, including construction, mining and steel production. Industrialism needed a workforce that was roughly 80% manual and 20% administrative and professional. This requirement influenced the structure of public education. Typically, it was shaped like a pyramid, with a broad base of elementary education tapering to a narrow peak of higher education. The majority of children went to elementary school and a smaller number went on to high school. The majority of those left full-time education at 14 to find work. A few went on to higher education. Those with strong academic qualifications went to universities, others to trade colleges or polytechnics.

In Europe, there were usually two types of high school: academic schools for a minority of pupils who showed an aptitude for such work; and more practical or technically oriented schools for the majority who did not. The academic schools fed the universities, which had higher status, and so too did the students who went to them. It was not that only a minority was capable of going to university: the supply of places was limited by the needs of the labor markets. As these needs have changed, so the number of places in higher education has increased. In the United States and Europe, the expansion began in the 1960s, partly to accommodate the bulging population of baby boomers after the end of World War II. This trend has continued with the burgeoning demands of the “knowledge economy.” From the beginnings of state education in the United Kingdom, the expansion of academic “grammar” schools went hand in hand with the founding of new universities in the major industrial centers.⁴ There was a similar pattern of expansion in the United States. Some American universities, such as Indiana, Madison Wisconsin and Ohio State, are now the size of small towns and are turning out graduates in their tens of thousands every year.

Over the last 40 years, the number of young people capable of achieving university-level education has increased from one in five to one in two. What happened to account for this remarkable flowering in intellectual capacity? Was it fluoride in the water or the rise of organic farming? The fact is that most young people have always been capable of higher academic study, but, until recently, the economy did not need them in such large numbers.

THE CULTURE OF EDUCATION

The rise of industrialism influenced not only the structure of mass education but also its organizational culture. Like factories, schools were planned with special facilities, with boundaries that separated them from the outside world, set hours of operation and prescribed rules of conduct. They were designed on the principles of standardization and conformity. Students were taught broadly the same material and they were assessed against common scales of achievement, with relatively few opportunities for choice or deviation. They moved through the system in age groups: all the 5-year-olds together, all the 6-year-olds together and so on, as if the most important thing that children have in common is their date of manufacture. In high schools, the day was organized into standard units of time, with the transitions marked by bells or buzzers. The curriculum was based on division of labor with specialist teachers of separate disciplines. The systems operated on the manufacturing principles of linearity and conformity. Each stage was designed to build on the one before. If students progressed in the prescribed way through the system, and especially if they completed college, they emerged at the far end educated and ready for work.

The original architecture of these systems is still visible in the way that many school systems work today. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I saw an egregious example of the linear principle in the form of a discussion paper for education entitled, “College Begins in Kindergarten.” There is more to say on this issue of linearity, but let me simply say here that college does not begin in kindergarten. Kindergarten begins in kindergarten. The director of The Ark Children’s Theatre in Dublin once made a wonderful comment on this theme. “A three-year-old,” he said, “is not half a six-year-old. A six-year-old is not half a twelve-year-old.” Three-year-olds are three. In some urban centers the competition is so intense for places in the “right” kindergartens that children are being interviewed – for kindergarten. What are the interviewers looking for, evidence of infancy?

The principle of linearity sees education as preparation for something that happens later on. This approach is sometimes called the front-loading model of education: you accumulate educational resources at the beginning of your life and eke them out gradually as you get older. I have also heard it called the gas tank model: you are filled up in your youth with an initial supply of education, which is meant to see you through the rest of life’s journey. Sadly, some young people leave school with half a tank; it is basic grade and there are too few gas stations if they run out en route.

It is worth pausing on the analogy with motor cars. Some policy makers talk about reforming education as if they were sorting out the auto industry. They emphasize the need to get back to basics and focus on the core business, to face up to overseas competition and to raise standards and improve efficiency, return on investment and cost-effectiveness. The difference is that motor cars and other lifeless products have no interest in how they are produced. People, on the other hand, are keenly interested in their own lives and education. They have feelings and opinions, hopes and aspirations. Ignoring the human factor is at the root of many of the problems that industrial systems of education have created.

Education is not only a preparation for what may come later; it is also about helping people engage with the present. What we become in our lives depends on the quality of our experiences here and now. For many people there never has been a simple, linear progression from education to a neatly planned career. Our lives are too buffeted by the currents and crosscurrents of social forces and personal impulse and the unpredictable confluences of events and opportunities.

The assumption of a direct line between what is taught in school and the work that young people do afterwards puts a priority on subjects that seem most relevant to the economy. If the economy needs more scientists and technologists, science and technology are given higher priority and other programs, in the arts and humanities, for example, are cut to make way for them. This policy is not in the better interests of young people or of society in general and it is not even the best way to produce good scientists and technologists. It is a mistake to think of the relationship between education and the economy as a straightforward process of supply and demand. While industrial systems may be standardized and linear, human life is not. It runs on different principles.

THE SEPTIC FOCUS

I had a friend, Dave, who was an actor. He was a large actor, weighing about 280 pounds. He liked to drink beer and had a particular taste for a powerful brew called Abbot Ale. You could run a small car on Abbot Ale, or a large actor. Dave regularly drank 12 pints of it a day. Some years ago, he developed back pain and went to his doctor, who referred him to a kidney specialist. The specialist examined him and said that he had potentially serious kidney problems. Dave asked what could be causing it. “It could be a number of things,” said the consultant. “Do you drink?” Dave said that he did, socially, and mentioned the Abbot Ale. He admitted that he “socialized” quite a lot. The specialist told him he would have to stop drinking or face the prospect of renal failure. Dave said he couldn’t stop drinking: he was an actor. “In that case,” said the specialist, “why don’t you change to spirits?” Dave said he thought that spirits could cause cirrhosis of the liver. “But you haven’t come to see me about your liver,” said the specialist, “I am concerned about your kidneys.” A holistic doctor would have recognized that the problem in Dave’s kidneys was a result of his overall lifestyle. Solving one problem by causing another is no solution. The septic focus is evident in the education reform movements that focus on certain parts of the system while neglecting the system as a whole.

Why do the disciplines at the top of the hierarchy get all the attention? Why does this hierarchy exist in the first place? The first answer is economic: some disciplines are assumed to be more relevant to the world of work. Generations of young people have been steered away from the arts with benign advice about poor job prospects: “Don’t do art, you won’t make it professionally as an artist.” “Don’t take music, you won’t make a living as a musician.” Benign advice maybe, but now profoundly wrong, as we will see. The arts are often thought to be important in schools for other reasons: as opportunities for creativity and self-expression or as leisure or “cultural” activities. When times are hard, many people take it for granted that the arts are not relevant to the hardheaded business of making a living. They may be interesting and enriching in themselves but when push comes to shove, they are disposable luxuries – optional at best.

I once had an argument on British television about this with a prominent member of the government. He said that the arts are important because they help to educate people for leisure. One of the many problems with this argument is that leisure is relative to work. If you have less work, you may have more leisure, if you have no work, you are unemployed. At the time, there were something like 2 million people in the UK who were unemployed. They were not organizing themselves as the new leisured classes.

There is another reason for the hierarchy, which is cultural. After all, children are not usually told, “Don’t do math, you’re not going to be a mathematician,” or “Don’t take science, you won’t make it as a scientist.” The disciplines at the top of the hierarchy are assumed to be inherently more important. This assumption is not to do with economics: it has to do with ideas about knowledge and intelligence. These ideas have dominated our ways of thinking for the past 300 years. If one pillar of mass education is industrialism, the second is academicism.

ECONOMIC CHALLENGES

Education has critical roles in developing the knowledge, skills and attitudes that are needed for economic vitality and growth. Current systems of education are causing problems that affect people from the top of the labor market to the bottom of it: from those who are highly qualified to those with no qualifications at all.

The war for talent

Many organizations are finding it difficult to find the people they need. When they do find them, they often have trouble keeping them. Executives say there is an increasing shortage of the people needed to run divisions and manage critical functions, let alone lead companies. This problem has been building for some time. One of the consequences is that organizations are fighting a war for talent.⁹

The corporate consultancy company, McKinsey, worked with the human resources departments of 77 large US companies in a variety of industries to understand their talent-building philosophies, practices and challenges. Their original study included nearly 400 corporate offices and 6,000 executives in the “top 200” ranks in these companies. It also drew on case studies of 20 companies widely regarded as being rich in talent.¹⁰ Three-quarters of companies had said they had insufficient talent sometimes, and all were chronically short of talent across the board.¹¹ The study concluded that executive talent has long been an under-managed corporate asset. Companies that manage their physical and financial assets with rigor and sophistication have not made their people a priority in the same way. Few employees trust employers to provide useful opportunities for professional development. Most take a short-term view of training needs. Only a third of employers provide training beyond the job. In a rapidly changing environment, they worry that their best talent will be poached by other companies. They are wary of investing in developing their own talent since they fear it will primarily benefit their competitors. Staff turnover is often high and vacant posts are filled with outside talent. According to search professionals, the average executive will work in five companies; in another ten years it may be seven.

Most companies choose to develop powerful recruitment and retention processes to get the “right people” on board. The problem with the short-term model is that “it does nothing to prevent the exodus of the rest – those whose talents are undeveloped. It assumes a world with an unlimited supply of talent … that does not mind working in businesses where development is not deemed a priority.”¹² Even so, according to McKinsey, companies are engaged in a war for senior executive talent that will remain a defining characteristic of the competitive landscape for decades to come. Yet most are ill prepared, and even the best are vulnerable.¹³

CULTURAL CHALLENGES

I sometimes ask people at conferences to put their hands up if they are over the age of 30 and to keep them up if they are wearing a wristwatch. Usually it is the majority. When I ask teenagers the same question, very few keep their hands up. As a rule, the current generation of teenagers do not wear wristwatches. For them, the time is everywhere, on their smartphones, tablets and games units. They see no need to wear a separate gadget just to tell the time.“Why would you?” they say. “It’s a single function device. How lame is that?” I say, “No, it’s not, it tells the date as well.”

Technology, as was once said, is not technology if it happened before you were born. Digital technologies have created what has been called the biggest generation gap since rock and roll. Mark Prensky and others make a distinction between digital natives and digital immigrants.²¹ This is not a hard distinction but it does point to a generational shift. In immigrant communities, the adults often recreate the culture of the old country in the new one, for the sake of nostalgia and security. The children are thrust into the new culture, embrace it more vigorously and teach it to the adults. It is often this way with digital culture. Our children have a lot to teach us about the possibilities of the new tools and ways of thinking. They speak digital as their native tongue, many adults speak it as a second language. Our children do not even consider these devices as technology. They are as natural to them as the air they breathe.

As technologies race forward, economies oscillate and populations shift, so do values and behavior. Education systems everywhere now have to contend with massive waves of cultural change on every front. Some of these are the direct features of digital culture, some are not. In the last 50 years many of the old certainties have also broken down: the nuclear family, patterns of religious involvement, gender roles and the rest. The cavernous inequalities of wealth and opportunity are opening deeper divisions between cultural communities. Everywhere, and for every reason, cultural identities are now complex, interwoven and contested.

PERSONAL CHALLENGES

Young people in school are under much more pressure from testing than my generation was. They work harder to get into college than we did, they work harder when they are there if they want a good result and, when they leave, their qualifications are worth less. This pressure begins when they are 5, if not 3, and continues throughout school. For students in higher education, the pressure can be more intense. As academic inflation continues to rise, students put themselves under immense pressure to succeed. Many take performance-enhancing drugs to stay focused.

There is another pressure. In a study of suicidal behavior among students, Rory O’Connor and Noel Sheehy argue that students “are under pressure to be rounded, happy, successful, talented, bright young things and they want to fit in … They are under pressure not to appear under pressure.” More and more of them are finding all of these pressures too difficult to bear and are suffering from the consequences. The numbers of suicides at universities highlight the toxic pressures to succeed. Some student counselors are joining the call for schools to spend more time helping young people to develop the personal, social and coping skills they need to deal with contemporary life: “Only by getting young people to talk can we tackle the stigma associated with being unable to deal with stress and the reluctance to go to see anyone about it … By assuming that academic success is the be-all and end-all of life, we are not teaching people how to deal with failure and this is a fundamental oversight.”²²

TAKING STOCK

The current systems of mass education were conceived and built in other times to meet other challenges. They have to be reconceived to meet the challenges we face now. Despite the growing skills gap, the war for talent and the pace of change on every front, many policy makers and others continue to chant the mantra about the need to raise traditional academic standards and scores on standardized tests. The reason, I believe, is that the assumptions underpinning these approaches to education have become so deeply embedded that many people are not even aware of them. They have blended into the everyday ideologies of common sense, as the way things have to be. Like a lot of common sense, what may seem obvious can also be wrong. Raising academic standards alone will not solve the problems we face; it may compound them. To move forward we need to rethink some of our basic ideas about education, intelligence and ourselves. Above all, we need to awaken ourselves from what James Hemming²³ vividly called the “academic illusion.” It enthralls us more completely than you might think.