"We've bought into the idea that education is about training and "success", defined monetarily, rather than learning to think critically and to challenge. We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is to its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death." - Chris Hedges, posted on Facebook. The quote is from "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle". Click on the title to see more quotes from the book.
Here's some more food for thought. There are over 1,000,000 (or is it 3,000,000) jobs that can't be filled because there are not enough "qualified" applicants. There are not enough "qualified" applicants because "qualified" is often very narrowly defined (can you do everything on day one). Many corporations expect applicants to have gained the "skills" elsewhere. To gain "skills" one has to have been trained at another company or at a university. Many large corporations and overpaid CEOs don't want to pay the taxes for a high quality education system. Many are calling for more H1-B visas to allow for more "highly-skilled" immigrants. In other words, the taxes in other countries are supposed to pay for educating these "highly-skilled" immigrants.
Personally I'm all for unlimited immigration, but not when it is a dodge to get lower-paid workers.
BTW, I spent six years in Europe as a "highly-trained" foreign worker. I sometimes had to travel to another country to help out on a problem, even when the local was probably better qualified to solve the problem.
