Obama vs. Romney, The Great Debate: The Mission of Education in 21st Century America

 “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
– Peter Drucker

When it comes to contrasting the essential differences between presidential candidates, I can’t think of anything more revealing than their responses to the question: what is the mission of education in twenty-first century America? How a president envisions the role of education in shaping the future of America is a telling indicator of his or her core beliefs, philosophies, economic theories, values, morals, and ethics.

Because the world is changing faster and more complexly than at any time in human history, the security and prosperity of 21^st century America will depend, like never before, on how well it educates its children. But beyond the party platitudes, what does that mean? What is the role of learning in how children become adults? What is the role of government in leading the learning of its children? What is the purpose of education in this new digital age? What is education’s responsibility to each individual child…to parents…to the local community… to the economy… to the nation… to the planet?

If you could ask Romney and Obama a question, what would it be? What questions about education do you think would force them to dig deeper than the platitudes and reveal their visions for the future of American education?

I propose we  get the debate moderators to add a new dimension to the upcoming debates. First, in a break from the traditional approach, we give them advance notice and allow them to formulate a two-minute response to our question: “What is the mission of education in the twenty-first century?”  Because we don’t want to settle for gross generalizations and rhetoric, we need a comprehensive response to the question that addresses a number of critical issues and considerations.  So, after each has given their presentation during the debate, the moderator can choose among our other questions to draw them into a deeper and more detailed sharing of what their respective ‘mission statements’ mean.

What are those sub questions, issues, and considerations?  Few things could be more important to our nation’s future than educators engaging with each other to work them out. Towards that end, I sincerely hope you will get involved, contribute your questions and share your comments. In the meantime, and with hope of helping support the process, here are a few issues and questions that I think should be considered:

Question:  What does your forecast of the economy 15 to 20 years from now, particularly its human skills requirements, tell you about what our educational priorities should be today?

Robotic assembly lines eliminated tens of millions of manual labor jobs. Office computing eliminated tens of millions of routine office jobs. Computers have become a billion times more powerful (cost v processing power) in the past few decades and it’s estimated that they will continue becoming exponentially more powerful in the next few decades. Already, today, machines are competing with humans for ‘thought work’ jobs like grading college essays, writing news stories, managing entire cities and for ‘high skill’ jobs like ‘diagnosing human illness’. What human skills will be in demand 15 or 20 years from now when the machines are tens of millions of times more cost-effective at performing what had been exclusively human jobs? (see “The Challenge of Change“)

Obviously there will be ever fewer opportunities for human beings who can only perform repetitive manual labor, remember factoids, or perform routine intellectual functions. What should children be learning today that will make their future employment opportunities less vulnerable to becoming obsolete as the machines continue to advance?