verging_on_random

Education and learning

December 5, 2007 on 9:37 pm | In Uncategorized |

Julia Gillard’s mega-ministry, and her explanation of why it’s sensible, illustrate some of the strengths of the traditional Labor approach to the role of government. Unfortunately they also reveal some of the weaknesses, which proved to rebound against Labor over the years of the Howard Government. Hopefully she will think further about these matters and refine her philosophy over time.

First, the strengths. Gillard and the ALP understand the importance of investing in training and education as a means of providing productive capacity for the future of the nation. They grasp the fatal flaws in market-based approaches to education, training and work skills; the reality that in many instances it will always be economically rational for an employer to try to attract labour that is already skilled by offering higher wages instead of waiting patiently for months or years until trainees become fully productive. Government therefore has to interfere in the market.

For a long time, it did this by training many more people than it actually needed. Tens of thousands of trades people did their apprenticeships with state government departments and instrumentalities, only to quit and get higher-paying jobs in the private sector shortly after getting their papers. It was an effective system but it died away when those same government agencies were privatised and corporatised, following which they were as reluctant to engage supernumerary trainees as any other employer.

The Hawke and Keating Governments tried various ways to tackle the problem. The training guarantee levy was a short-lived attempt at coercion that was one of Labor’s poorer initiatives. Subsidies and incentives did some good but they were extraordinarily inefficient and unpredictable measures. Most hopes were pinned on making vocational training the centrepiece of enterprise bargaining but this too proved to be a forlorn hope. Many union officials were incapable of thinking beyond wage increases in return for changes to work practices and even if they had been long-term thinkers, the dramatic decline in union density that began in the late 1980s meant that union bargaining was never going to be a solution for the bulk of the workforce.

Since then of course Howard’s mob have done bugger-all, content to reap the rewards of the Hawke/Keating years by milking the existing workforce for all it was worth while using immigration and 487 visas as bandaids for specific skills problems. Public education including universities and the TAFE system has been criminally neglected (by which I do not necessarily mean underfunded, although I think there is an element of that) but abused, despised, treated with contempt and made the subject of a variety of petty ideological projects that seemed to serve no purpose other than to let the overgrown juveniles who inhabited the Howard front bench to get square for the games they had played as student politicians in the 1970s.

All of which means that it’s easy to describe the problem but not so easy to come up with useful measures to improve matters. I look forward with interest to the changes that Gillard will announce over the coming months and years, once she’s got the worthwhile but essentially peripheral stuff like ‘a computer for every kid’ out of the way.

Turning to the shortcomings, they are summed up in this passage:

“My portfolios cover a wide range of policy areas, and some have suggested they are a slightly unusual combination,” she told an Australian Industry Group conference in Canberra.

“But the reason why they have all been joined together is simple. In today’s world the areas covered by my portfolios - early childhood education and child care, schooling, training, universities, social inclusion, employment participation and workplace co-operation - are all ultimately about the same thing: productivity.

“So while my portfolios can be a mouthful, I’ll be happy to be referred to simply as the Minister for Productivity.”

Spoken like a true tradesperson … for in truth the education of lawyers might take place in universities but it’s still based on a vocational training model. Moreover it’s easy to understand why the Labor Party would cling to this philosophy. For working class people, education was indeed a passport to work that paid more and equally importantly, provided higher social status. Many newly arrived immigrant families still drive their kids with fierce determination to do well at school or uni, not because they value learning for its own sake, but because they want qualifications that have exchange value in the labour market.

This is the fundamental weakness in Labor’s approach. It has an extremely instrumental view of education and training. The value of learning, in Labor’s view, is that it makes people more productive, which improves the efficiency of enterprises and also leads to a general increase in wages. And all very sound this is too.

And yet … and yet …

The education=productivity philosophy subordinates education and training outcomes to the needs of the labour market. It overlooks the role that education should play in developing citizens’ capabilities in the areas of critical thinking, social awareness and historical reflection.

Why is this counter to Labor’s own interests, as well (I would contend) as a slow degradation of the cultural foundation of our society? Well because an instrumental view of education and training encourages the ‘aspirational’ mindset which has become so popular lately, especially amongst the nouveaux riches who tend to worship materialistic values and also to support the conservative parties. In other words, encouraging the ‘onward and upward’ view of social existence is likely to encourage people to abandon those awful socialists with their public schools and Medicare and start supporting the party of choice, committed to the preservation of privilege for the wealthy.

More importantly than this, neglecting the importance of education as the art of teaching people how to think rationally leads to deep-seated flaws in the functioning of society. No matter how one regards the merits of some of the things done by Howard’s mob, it would be hard for anyone to argue that they were justified by an informed, evidence-based public discussion. Indeed one of the hallmarks of public discourse in Australia is the extent to which participants are guided by prejudice and ignorance and a total inability to comprehend the distinction between data, theory and personal opinion.

This degradation of public participation in politics is apparent in the endless arguments about global warming. Many enthusiastic participants evidently consider themselves perfectly well-equipped to contradict and even condemn the work of eminent scientists, on no better grounds than that they’ve visited a few web sites or (if they’re really switched on) read a book or two. The difference between scholarship and amateur opinion escapes them utterly (a recent commenter here describes himself on his blog as an arts graduate but mainly self-educated … well good on ya dude, but forgive me if I place more weight on the considered findings of the International Panel on Climate Change.)

A well-educated population (such as is found in many European countries) would rightly treat these amateurs with amusement but here (and of course in the USA only more so) they tend to be accorded just as much respect as scholars who actually know what they are talking about. In fact, public discussion in Australia and the USA is these days more often characterised as a debate, with victory going to whoever can sell their point of view better regardless of its intrinsic merits. This of course is a description of demagoguery, the antithesis of informed participatory democracy, but sadly it’s an indication of the direction in which our political discourse is heading. Rabble-rousing ratbags like Alan Jones and Rush Limbaugh exercise more influence than scholars who actually understand a topic because the shock jocks pander to popular prejudices and appeal to ‘common sense’. In a properly educated society, people understand that common sense is an unreliable guide and they require the production of a reasoned case backed up by verifiable facts.

Vocational training is an important function of a national government and there’s nothing wrong with having it start at high school. But it is not as important as providing a first-class general education that allows citizens to reach informed opinions about the issues that are most important to the nation. Hell, just having more people take an intelligent interest in these issues would be a major step forward on the present situation. Let’s hope that I’ve misjudged Labor, and that over the next few years they restore a proper education system as well as seeing to the needs of a productive economy.