Immigration, Education and a Linkage?

[The_Professor]

Today's papers have articles about skilled immigrants and the need to expand the importation of people with particular skills that citizens can't do.

This raises some important questions about our education system. We spend more money per child on education now than we ever did, but all that efforts seems futile: we can't teach our kids enough to let them fill the technical jobs, and we have to import people to fill those, nor do we have large and well organized apprenticeship programs that might mitigate the failure of the school systems to fill the demands.

Why is this?

I suggest that it is largely due to a well meant but wrong headed sentiment that puts equality in education as the first priority.

I know that my experience in Catholic schools was thus: in Catholic school, energies, abilities, and talents had a better chance of being recognized. It is true that more was expected of us than at the local public schools where I grew up in Texas, and its greater discipline produced an atmosphere more conducive to learning. Those stunningly plain, no-nonsense nuns nurtured their brighter students while they dealt efficiently with the mediocre and gently with the backward, but they did not tolerate those who disrupted the calm of the classroom, neither the recalcitrant dummies nor the precocious show-offs.

Is this a better formula than "No Child Left Behind?

So long as we insist that we live in Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average, and insist on equality of outcomes, we will be required to import skilled workers to do the work Americans can't do.

I put it to you that importing the unskilled who will work for wages citizens can't live on, while running public schools that don't produce workers with the skills needed by a First World economy, is a formula for disaster.

I invite discussion.

[kimba1]

it`s more than that
many times I ask what jobs are in demands and only one person here actually answered.
for some reason the idea of actually telling people what jobs are in demand is not acceptable
if we`re importing people with tech skill
notice we`re not telling students what field to study to qualify in those fields.
it`s not just poor education.
we`re truely not serious about getting people qualified to work.
companies complained about american are not qualified to work in there companies but alot of them are not willing to do anything to make people qualify
ex. internships,workshops,etc.

[Henny]

So long as we insist that we live in Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average, and insist on equality of outcomes, we will be required to import skilled workers to do the work Americans can't do.

I put it to you that importing the unskilled who will work for wages citizens can't live on, while running public schools that don't produce workers with the skills needed by a First World economy, is a formula for disaster.

I invite discussion.

Professor, that is a very good point, and I think that an important part of the focus should be on the fact that every person has different abilities that should be nurtured, rather than trying to fit everyone into the same mold.

I thought I would share the education system I'm observing in the Middle East. I'm very impressed by it and I'm getting a first-hand view of how the whole thing works watching my niece, who is now in her senior year of high school.

In the first 3 years of high school all students study about the same thing - general education - but the Junior year is the test for where they will end up. All students, regardless of what school they attend (parochial, public, Catholic, Muslim... it doesn't matter) take a series of government sponsored exams twice per year (around the Christmas holidays and again in the spring). For students in their 3rd year of high school, those cumulative results define what specialization their course of studies will be for their Senior year. So, by the time the students start their Senior year, they are being groomed for what they are a "fit" for. Some to be engineers, doctors, others to be accountants, IT specialists... and down the line. That doesn't mean that the students are STUCK per se, just what the education system gives them as a focus for that year.

In the Senior year of high school, all students are what is called "Tawjihi" students. This is the big year, and they study like you've never seen kids study before. Starting in October, the schools beging administering "practice" exams to prepare them. From the end of November, they are dismissed from school simply to study for the exams, and then again at the end of April they are dismissed again to study. Again, at Christmas time and in the spring they take these government exams, but these shape their entire lives. The average of the exams is called the Tawjihi score. At the end of the year, every school prints the scores of the students in the newpaper, so that forms a sort of social pressure. Students who average 90% or above will almost definitely receive full scholarships to the best universities with encouragement to enter the fields of science, medicine, engineering, etc. In the 80-90% range, they are just "average," but will have no trouble being accepted into a good university, and are encouraged to follow a program of IT, business, accounting, etc. Lower than 70% and they are encouraged (and helped) to pursue a skilled trade.