Purpose of Elementary, Secondary Education Is not Job Training

To The Editor:
In an editorial dated Nov. 12, Publisher Art Hall called on Cape May Country schools to “educate students for fields where there are good jobs, whether the opportunity is here locally, or elsewhere . . . we need a thorough knowledge of our local industries, of their current and future needs. From there we need to tailor our educational system to meet those needs.”
I disagree. The purpose of elementary and secondary education is not job training. It is not vocational. Teaching kids how to fix a car or wire a telephone may help them get jobs today. But if we have learned anything in this generation it is that no job is secure. Radical change, and change that keeps coming ever faster are the fundamental facts of life, and they are the fundamental facts of employment – facing all of us and our children and our children’s children. Whatever facts or training or skills our children learn in school today will be largely irrelevant tomorrow. How well would somebody trained 10 or even five years ago do in operating or maintaining a new computer today, without constant re-training and re-learning the job?
In short, there is only one real purpose of primary and secondary education – helping children learn how to learn. Hall repeatedly dismisses “book-learning.” Books – whether in the traditional form of ink on paper or in new electronic formats are still the most effective means ever developed for people to learn. Provide kids with the basic mental tools for dealing with facts, and they can learn whatever they need to cope with whatever change comes along. Without those tools they, and we, are doomed.
GEORGE LESSER
Cape May
Publisher’s Note:
The letter writer is absolutely correct regarding the purpose of education; thank you for your clarification. Our youth must be well grounded, so as to enable them to thrive as human beings and further, to thrive in whatever field of endeavor they may choose to undertake. Such would be very difficult if they did not learn to love to read.
The American educational system further undertakes vocational training in a substantial way, in contrast to the apprenticeship model stressed in other advanced countries. It is to the vocational-training portion that Hall’s remarks were directed.