Education’s inflated virtues

MINISTER FOR education and science, Batt O’Keeffe, recently said his department was carrying out an investigation into the exam results of Irish students over the last two decades. Both the Leaving Certificate and third level degree results are widely suspected of having risen since the early 1990s. Assuming there hasn’t been a sharp rise in intellectual capacity as a result of Ireland’s excellent school system, the finger is now being pointed at the dread spectre of ‘grade inflation’.

Cue wailing and gnashing of teeth.

‘Top foreign firms put off by our ‘dumbed down’ college courses’, screamed the Irish Independent. (1) The Belfast Telegraph noted accusations that ‘the Irish college system looks suspiciously efficient’. (2) The Irish Times warned darkly of a ‘grade inflation scandal which has had such a huge impact across the education system’. (3)

Scary stuff. Aparrently when the world economy finally recovers from the current slump Ireland will remain mired because we were too easy on our students. How can our education system be so bad that it will foil the country’s (entirely, ahem, academic at this point) economic recovery?

The answer is simple: politicians have used education as an alternative to developing meaningful economic and industrial policy for the country, expecting educators to make students into useful economic units that appeal to business. In other words training, not education.

What is education really for? Ask any politician today and you will be regaled with tall tales about developing a ‘smart economy’ – what you won’t hear is anything about the virtues of education in and of itself. The instrumentalisation of education is now so commonplace that it is assumed that its purpose, even that of higher education, is directly related to workplace. The horrific management-speak buzzwords littering newspaper articles and political statements such as ‘upskilling’ give the game away: it’s education Jim, but not as we knew it.

Traditionally a university degree course was about expanding students’ minds beyond the daily skills needed in the mundane everyday world of work – skills that it was always assumed would be picked-up through actually working. University education promoted not directly measurable ‘outcomes’ but the development of well-rounded students whose ability to think creatively was prized as an end in itself. Yes, economics was always an issue, but it was assumed that a well educated individual could tackle a range of tasks and did not need specialist micro-training before they even reached the workplace.

Today universities are like a cross between the local Fás office and a creche – and the recession has only made this worse.

“Those with the capacity to develop skills in areas where jobs are most likely to be available should be able to do so quickly and flexibly. We must also look beyond direct inward investment to developing homegrown talent, with a greater emphasis on developing innovation skills and assisting Irish entrepreneurs to create the next Google, Nokia or Apple,” writes Green TD Paul Gogarty in the Irish Independent. (4)

Gogarty doesn’t know what he’s talking about. For the record, Apple was founded in a suburban garage by two college dropouts who funded it by, among other things, selling ‘blue boxes’ that allowed people to make illegal free calls from phoneboxes. Nokia, meanwhile, is an old-fashioned ‘horizontally-integrated’ industrial conglomorate, and was founded in 1967 as a result of countless mergers of large industrial corporations. Of the three only Google has its roots in the academy – and even it was the result of PhD research, not one of the training schemes disguised as undergraduate degrees we see today.

Taking just one example, Apple was the result not only of a ‘hacker’ mentality but an entire industrial infrastructure, in the form of the semiconductor manufacturing industry, that was funded by the state to the tune of countless billions. Personal computers were a byproduct of a strong, if state subsidised, economy focussed on massive and rapid technological development. Today’s endless calls for entrepreneurship and innovation don’t merely put the cart before the horse, they assume there is no need for a horse in the first place.

Education cannot be put to work to paper over the cracks in industrial policy. Rather than fret about grade inflation Irish politicians would do better to hit the books themselves. Perhaps some intensive study would reveal that the roots of the current economic crisis are a result of a retreat from capital investment in productive activity – this journalist can, for one, suggest some reading matter Ireland’s ignorant elite may find very educational indeed.

It was once very different: as professor Andrew Caclutt writes, comparing his experience at a British grammar school in the 1970s with that of contemporary schools, education today is focussed on an ever narrower view of human experience.

‘Instead of training itself to master the unknown, today’s elite inculcates the belief that the unknown shall be the master of humanity, and has designed a variety of educational programmes to match this uniform dogma,’ he writes.

Make no mistake, grade inflation is a real issue but an educational system that turns a blind eye to cheating is the inevitable result of a society that sees no value in education for its own sake and is only interested in its contribution to the economy.

Ireland’s political elite is incapable of valuing education for its own sake and, lacking a positive vision of the future, is literally banking on a skilled workforce dragging the country’s out of the doldrums. When Paul Gogarty writes ‘Even though third-level places are at an all-time high, there is a need to ensure that our workforce is upskilled to take advantage of any upturn’, (5) he is tacitly admitting that he is interested in training economic units, not educating students.

JASON WALSH was educated free-of-charge at a grammar school in the North and the University of Ulster. He may yet complete his studies at the University of East London and National College of Art and Design in Dublin – but no-one is banking on it.

(1) Top foreign firms put off by our ‘dumbed down’ college courses, John Walshe, Irish Independent, February 15, 2010
(2) View from Dublin: We must be sure students really make the grade, Brendan Keenan, Belfast Telegraph, March 9, 2010
(3) Teacher’s pet, Irish Times, March 9, 2010
(4) In my opinion: Real competition and flexibility are urgently needed, Paul Gogarty, Irish Independent, February 10, 2010
(5) Ibid