*Note: If you have not already done so please read my philosophy on education which can be found here.
The American education system has a problem in that it spends far more energy focusing on what it can accomplish rather than what it should accomplish. That is not to short change the wonderful men and women who are doing the best they can with what they’ve got. Some of their efforts are truly herculean. But they shouldn’t have to be. Instead of trying to make do with what they’ve got they should have an over-abundance of resources to accomplish their goals. The process needs to look something like this: Define what your final product should look like, establish intermittent goals that need to be reached in order to obtain that final product, identify the obstacles to achieving those goals, and finally find workable solutions to those problems. Today I’m going to follow my own reasoning and begin at the end.
The end in this case would be a high school graduate. While it is certainly true that many young people go off to university after getting their high school diploma it is also true that many do not. Therefore if we are looking to establish a clear and inclusive finishing line for our education system it has to be high school graduation. So if our finished product is a high school graduate then what skills does that graduate need to be able to competitively function in the modern world?
To begin with they will need to be able to communicate effectively. This means in addition to having a mastery of the English language they will need to at minimum be able to speak Spanish and one other foreign language. Spanish is a necessity because in twenty years Spanish speakers may well out number English speakers in the United States. Given US economic and cultural ties the additional foreign language should be selected from (in order of my recommendation) Mandarin, Arabic, French, German, or Japanese. If you wish to learn Italian or Latin do it on your own time.
But we live in the digital age and words no matter what language they are in are not the only way we communicate. Our lives are now dictated by software. It is essential that we prepare young people to live in that world. In the future I would foresee this requirement expanding to include two or three languages from this list but for now we should immediately implement a plan that requires high school graduates to know at least one of the following: Java, C++, Ruby, Python, or PHP.
Having established the ability to communicate in the modern world we move on to the things that will be driving force of the 21st century: Science and Technology. Fundamentally these fields rely on mathematics making calculus a requirement. Following from that our graduate will need at least a basic understanding of biology, chemistry, physics, electronics, and engineering. Their learning should encompass both theory and practical applications of those theories. Specialization in these fields is to be expected and encouraged but we will refrain at this point as our focus is on the bare minimum a student needs to achieve graduation.
Our finished product can now communicate with their global peers and have a firm foundation in the STEM fields that are the future of our economy. But it’s not enough to be able to do what you’ve been taught. To be successful you must be able to problem solve. To be a great problem solver you have to have imagination, to be able to think laterally, to reason and think critically about the problem at hand, you have to understand context. You also need to be able to discern between a correct solution and a right solution. In addition to being a problem solver our student needs to have a moral compass. After all one solution to not having money is to steal some. That doesn’t mean it’s the right way to solve your problem.
And this is where the liberal arts come into play. Right now our social studies departments put an overemphasis on names and dates, facts and figures. This is information that anyone with a smartphone can look up with the touch of a button. Our finished product needs to have been exposed to classes in economics, history, philosophy, ethics, government, theology that have emphasized cause and effect, abstract thinking and theorizing, moral quandaries, and critical reasoning.
Finally our finished product must have compassion for their fellows. Love flows from appreciating beauty. The more beauty you see the more you are capable of love. Nothing teaches an appreciation of beauty faster than the fine arts. To graduate a student needs to have at least been exposed to music, art, theater, dance, and film. Here it is acceptable to have a core focus in one area and simple overview of the others is so desired.
Throw in a course on everyday life skills such as cooking, budgeting, and banking as well as courses on proper nutrition and physical wellness and we’re all set. Our high school graduate has the ability to communicate and think critically while possessing the basic skills to work with technology. They are also possessed of compassion and a firm moral compass that allows them to consider the needs of society in relation to their own. All of which should make for a citizen prepared to go out and meet the world head on.
I realize that what I’ve described may sound like an ideal. It’s not. If the United States is going to survive into the next century this needs to become the standard. As a society we have a lot of work to do to get here. But we have to find a way do that work because if we don’t the results will be disastrous.