Knowle’s Assumptions #4 – Readiness to learn
Posted by Mark Winegar on September 9, 2008
“Adults are ready to learn those things they need to know in order to cope effectively with life situations.”
This assumption begs us to turn an examining eye toward curriculum. Are we teaching the skills needed in today’s world? Consider this Associated Press report from August 1.
Things aren’t so good for the economy now. We’ve lost 463,000 jobs so far this year! The unemployment rate is at 5.7% and rising, 20.3% for teens, and that doesn’t represent the entire out-of-workforce. It hasn’t always been so. I’ve been involved in higher education since 1984 and enjoyed 100% placement of my computer science graduates every year until 2005. As a hiring manager at Zenith Data Systems and Gateway 2000 I couldn’t find enough qualified talent. What happened?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting the educational system is responsible for our current economic situation. Rather I’m suggesting we can be part of the solution. How’s that?
I teach at a small Catholic liberal arts college so what I’m about to suggest is not going to make me popular on my campus. We need to focus on career skills. The truth is its easier to enjoy the arts when you are warm, fed, and safe. I believe our greatest responsibility then is to give students employable skills and a lifelong hunger for learning.
The good sisters at Sacred Heart Monestary must have known that when the created Mount Marty College. Although we are a liberal arts college our strengths are our fine Nursing and Education programs both of which are occupational programs. We also offer occupational programs in Graphic Arts, Computer Science, and more. This cohabitation of occupational and arts programs are not a dichotomy. Rather they are like two sides of a coin. You need both sides.
Good writing is just as important to a computer programmer as a foundation in programming logic. A graphic artist needs to know about balance and composition so they can apply them to photo editing. A math teacher must be able to speak well. Our nurses must be able to understand a patient’s need for care. And we all need to be good citizens. These are just a few of the necessary contributions from the liberal arts side of the equation. But we fine tune the curriculum to take advantage of those teachable moments when liberal arts can enhance occupational education.
Occupational educators need to have real world experience. Too many of us have never worked in our field but are rather a product of academic inbreeding. Our ivory towers honor works which are unproductive in our fields and do not recognize true contributions to our disciplines. For instance, we hire new faculty in Computer Science because they published in scholarly journals but never stop to consider they ought to have been coding applications instead. We honor unpaid presentations to closed-minded conference attendees while ignoring the fact that talented individuals are too busy earning $150+ an hour addressing the needs of open-minded business executives and helping to build their strategic plans for the future. This is the kind of information you will never see published in a “scholarly” journal until long after it has lost all of its strategic value. First-hand experience is as essential to the occupational educator as the air we breathe and our hiring practices must begin to honor it.
Occupational educators must be current in their field and there is no better way than continuous practice. We need to keep involved by working as well as teaching. Working in the field needs to be recognized as a valid form of academic research. We must also bring our new knowledge back into the classroom in order to make our students more competitive on the job market.
We must keep an eye on the future as well. What new career paths are emerging? What will people in those careers need to know? How can we best teach them? These are the questions we must constantly ask to avoid obsolescence.
Our task then is to keep occupational programs current and forward looking, create the occupational programs needed in the near future, and give our students employable skills in every area.
Let’s get to work!
