We don't have the ability or will to 'fix' anything as complex as education.
A bold statement, but if anyone had said it twenty, or fifty years ago, people would have pooh-poohed them; & yet we've gotten nowhere over that time. I don't think I'm going out on a limb in saying what people have been thinking for a long time, & I won't have to wait twenty years to be "proven right".
The reason we won't fix the system is because those empowered to do so - those holding the purse strings - can't. They are the wrong people to see what the problems are, & they have the wrong reasons for applying fixes.
I am, of course, talking about politicians. They are not professional educators, they are not administrators of education systems, they have no skills in business transformation, they are not even employers of the newly educated. They have no vested interest in fixing education. They have no notion of the problems actually within the system. Their only goal is to appear to be doing something in the eyes of their electoral base.
Let's be cynical (of politicians - I'd like you to be quite open to my suggestions) for a moment. One side of politics claims that the best education is acquired in the private system, therefore the closer the public system can get to that, the more likely it will be 'fixed'. This is anathema to their opposition, who would take the first opportunity to reverse any policies put in place along those lines. That second unnamed political party would claim that encouraging the best teachers to stay in the public system (by offering better wages) would improve the general level of education. This, of course, smacks of unionism, which could not be supported by the first side.
What if they're both right? Neither side could possibly support or encourage the others' position. Worse - what if they're both wrong & we just don't have enough parties to offer policies that fly in the face of these dogmatic approaches & be aired & discussed before the general populace - not the voters, but the parents & teachers.
Education is big (number of people involved, number of stakeholders - kids, budget, time - thirteen-plus years of a person's life), & yet policies are squeezed into five-second sound-bites - preferably by a minister & two cronies with good haircuts & an ability to smile & nod without looking like axe murderers.
This is insane. This - & only this - is why the education system cannot be fixed. We - as a society - must treat education with respect & ask more of those placed (by us) in positions of power (government), so that they, in turn, are compelled to add a touch of professionalism to parliament & policy making that achieves real outcomes when the cameras & microphones are switched off.
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