by Joseph N. Abraham, M.D.

A new concept emerging in many communities is the idea that the primary goal of education is to produce better workers. Our schools should support our economy. As might be expected, the people advocating such an approach tend to be employers.

Such an approach appears to be insufficient. First of all, if we are engaged in workforce development, then what workers are we developing? For which job shall we train workers? There is a popular slide show claiming that today’s graduate will hold 10 to 14 jobs by age 38. What will those jobs be? And even if we knew what they would be, we couldn’t possibly train for that many jobs. For which of them should we train our workers?

Even if we were to take the unreasonable approach that we are training “workers” who would spend an entire career in one kind of work, technology changes. The abilities required today of the lowest-skilled jobs are far different today than they were 20 years ago. Even janitors need to be able to order supplies on-line, handle new equipment, and understand the proper use and disposal of dangerous chemicals; for jobs more complicated than custodial work, the needed skills expand exponentially. So if by some chance we could successfully train our students for one job that they would keep their entire careers, we will still need to spend large sums of money constantly re-training them. Unless, of course, our workers could train themselves. And that provides our first clue.

After we consider those problems, we will also have to decide whether each student will become a manager, or an employee? Management necessarily deals with many data from many disciplines, and requires the ability to synthesize the information. Moving down the corporation ladder, skill sets become narrower, less independent, and more focused on rules and details. Look around any corporation, and it becomes quite clear that there was no way to predict who would become a manger, and who would become an employee. So if we train leaders, followers will be poorly trained; and obviously, the reverse is equally true. This gives us a second insight.

Next, why should the average taxpayer dedicate public funds garnered from her private, moderate income to fund the training of workers for industries, most of which earn much more money than the worker? If industry wishes better workers, you and I should not have to bear that cost out of our pockets.

Which bring up a deeper ideological question. The corporation almost always argues for less government, for lower taxes, and for privatization of everything possible. Given that, why should corporations now insist that government pay to train workers? if privatization is the superior strategy, here is a perfect opportunity for corporations to prove it. Is business arguing for workforce development simply to avoid the costs? If so, it appears that business has subjugated concerns for education to the desire for someone else to pay the costs. If corporations bear the costs, then by their own arguments, the pressures of the free market will produce the best solutions. This approach does not move us toward our conclusion, but it does expose a major flaw in this sort of thinking.

We must also ask how worker training fits into the democracy. Oppressive governments want worker training– and too many businesses are run like oppressive governments. Certainly an oppressive leader– in the nation, in the marketplace, or in religion– does not want independent-minded people running loose. Oppressive organizations can hardly withstand questioning about the strength and ethics of the current leadership. To the opposite, the oppressive organization only wants worker bees, who will simply do, and not think. Oppressive organizations vs. free democracies is the last insight, and tightly sums up the problems of worker training in the schools of free peoples.

These ideas are inadequate, because in a free democracy, education should not serve worker training. Here in the USA, one of our favorite saws is that it is possible for any young student to be elected President one day. The problem with this argument, is that EVERY student in the USA becomes President. When we cast our ballots, we are all the Chief Executive of the country; so everyone is President.

Our democracy is at odds with classical thought. In “The Republic”, democracy is dismissed as a model akin to allowing all citizens to steer the boat; hence the concept that continues after 2500 years, of “the ship of state”. The argument against democracy has been rejected in the modern world, of course, and we can see that it is precisely because everyone steers that the Free World also steers the world.

This only holds, however, if the citizens are independent-minded equals. In the poor, undereducated nations, democracy dies; it only flourishes where there is a thinking populace who understand the long-term obligations and implications of their choices.

So clearly, the democracy can hardly tolerate mindless worker bees. The democracy needs– demands in fact– incisive, broadly-trained thinkers. But then, so do communities, churches, service organizations, and yes, even corporations.

Workers are not what we need, not primarily. Citizens are what we need. The needs of the democracy require citizens with understandings of technology, geography, culture, history, political science, and economics. As the US is engaged in battles abroad, we can see that our misunderstanding of the cultures we are dealing with, and their history, has led to some enormous errors. As we engage with countries around the globe, we do not want to make those mistakes again. And so the person in the street needs not only to have been educated in these fields, but needs equally to continue that education, as a life-long quest.

Our world demands citizens who are versed in many disciplines, who can analyze and synthesize, who understand that the sciences, the humanities, business, politics, and the social sciences are all inter-related, and that they all interact to give us the world we live in– the one through which we must navigate our “ship of state”. Of course, a citizen who understands these things will also be a good employee; but not good at one job, and at one trade, but at almost anything we can throw at her, because she will have the understanding and intellectual skills to re-educate herself to adapt to the rapidly changing world around her.

And once we have educated the enlightened citizen-worker, she will also work for equally well-educated citizens, those who are mindful and respectful of the critical skills of their employees and their customers. And these enlightened managers will be able to take the input from all of these diverse viewpoints, and synthesize them to create business models that look less and less like the outmoded aristocratic structures of the past, and more and more like the democratic structures of today, and of the future.

We do not need workers, at least not first. We need independent-minded citizens, critical thinkers, fast re-learners: in our community, in our political process, and in our businesses. If we train employees rather than voters, then government and communities will fail, and business will fail with them.

But if we train citizens, all will prosper.

 About the Author:

Joseph N. Abraham, MD, is president and founder of APSE, booksXYZ.com, The Non-profit Bookstore listing over 2,000,000 books. He is also the author of the book Happiness: A Physician Biologist Looks at Life.