Maureen Lane
Disparities and Democracy
A new report from the Educational Testing Service - ETS called America's Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing Our Nation's Future, looks at the convergence of three powerful sociological and economic forces that are changing our nation's future: substantial disparities in skill levels (reading and math); seismic economic changes (widening wage gap); sweeping demographic shifts (less education, lower skills).
A Christian Science Monitor article about the study noted, "researchers emphasize they're not saying the US is in any danger of collapse... What they hope to do...is call attention to urgent issues that affect... the sort of democracy based on an informed middle class that the country was founded on." In other words, what affects the economically disadvantaged, will affect all of us, re: the middle class.
Today at Welfare Rights Initiative (WRI), we had a policy meeting. Students are working this semester to make policy simple and straightforwardly helpful by organizing community involvement in policy-making. They agreed that all of us have more power than we know and education is key to an informed and engaged public.
In fact, education from public school through adult continuing education and training needs to be a priority for the U.S., just like the ETS report concludes. Amen, brother!
The U.S.'s future economic well being is impacted by present educational policies we have and by current immigration policy. "Many immigrants enter [the US] without being able to read or speak English," says Kurt Landgraf, president of ETS. "Instead of forcing people to hide from the government infrastructure, we should be finding ways to include them in our society and help them bridge the language gap."
I would add U.S. welfare policy to this mix. People choosing to provide for their family's future by pursuing education and training are choices to be fostered by American public policy, not thwarted. All of the policies intersect.
As WRI students said today, policy should promote equality of opportunity and condition. Let's start by focusing on access to education...pre-K through college for all, without exception.
Maureen Lane: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 6:00 AM, Feb 09, 2007 in Economic Opportunity | Education
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Comments
If everyone gets a college education, will there be a lot of disappointed people, in that a significant proportion of the jobs in this country are not jobs which require a college education, or make use of skills which someone would aquire in their education? I will grant that there is nothign wrong with well educated food servers, drivers, clerks, etc. but I wonder if the policy Ms. Lane suggests "...without exception" would really work.
Posted by: Morris Pearl | February 12, 2007 10:58 AM
Thank you , Morris, for your comments. Your point about job growth in service industries is important to note. Do we want people educated just for jobs or is there an implication for a democratic society beyond the workplace when people attain knowledge and skills? The ETS researchers reference the "informed middle class" as key to our country's success. I believe that expanding access to education will only serve our country in scale and depth of what we mean by equality. I want people to have the choice for education, without exception. The power of self determination is in the right to choose. Not everyone will choose college or vocational
training. Just like not all college students are engineering majors.
Posted by: Maureen Lane | February 13, 2007 03:47 PM
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing in an unequal society.
Maybe if we had more college-educated food servers, clerks and drivers, we'd see a bigger and more effective push for improved wages and benefits and a stronger social safety net. Wasn't it a barista with a Ph.D. in French lit who tried to organize a union at Starbucks?
Posted by: J.T. | February 14, 2007 06:08 PM
Do we really think that many people get higher education with the intention of being a food service worker, a clerk, or a driver? There are, and will always be, undesirable jobs. It is not possible for everyone to have a "good" job.
In many people's mind, they have made it when someone else is serving them food, and driving their car, and taking care of their kids. Assume a certain level of compensation is necessary to hire a driver. Clearly the driver cannot hire his own driver. That argument more-or-less applies to many service workers. A house cleaner cannot make enough money to afford to hire another house cleaner, etc.
My argument is, to be more blunt than usual, that there are always going to be haves and have nots.
In my experience, people make sacrafices to go onto higher education because they want to join the category of the "haves". If eveyone goes to college, some of those people are going to be disappointed.
Morris
Posted by: morris pearl | February 17, 2007 12:14 PM
And, to address Ms. Lane's point, yes, I agree that everyone should have access to education. I read the last sentence of the original post as proposing that everyone should actually have pre-K through college education.
Our society should provide pre-K through 12th grade education for everyone, and not deny anyone a college education due to lack of financial resources.
Posted by: Morris Pearl | February 17, 2007 12:27 PM