ABSTRACT

How are children to prepare for an era in which work can be outsourced anywhere in the world, university graduates compete with computers and robots for jobs, and in which any number of other, unforeseeable social and economic trends may transpire? Popular discourses on educational reform talk of the need for schools and colleges to produce more flexible, creative, and analytic learners through ‘forward-looking’ diversification of the curriculum and technology use. In this article I argue that schools should in effect do less: Fundamental competences such as literacy and numeracy, and engagement with history, ideas, and the arts ought to be the goals of primary and secondary education. Elective classes in high school should offer more specialised, elective courses. A sufficiently motivated and capable minority can pursue such interests in higher education, but for the majority there should be no shame in departing formal education for the ‘real’ world much sooner.

摘要

孩子们如何为一个工作可以在世界任何地方外包、大学毕业生与计算机和机器人竞争工作以及可能出现许多其他不可预见的社会和经济趋势的时代做准备？关于教育改革的流行话语谈到学校和学院需要通过课程和技术使用的“前瞻性”多样化来培养更加灵活、创造性和分析性的学习者。在这篇文章中，我认为学校实际上应该少做一些: 识字和算术等基本能力，以及对历史、思想和艺术的参与应该是小学和中学教育的目标。高中的选修课应该提供更专业的选修课。有足够积极性和能力的少数人可以在高等教育中追求这样的兴趣，但对于大多数人来说，尽早离开正规教育进入“现实”世界并不感到羞耻。