Before we enter the working world we find ourselves being students. Some of us look out the window of the bus and see a pasture, others walk to school through the alley on a city street. Some of us are fortunate and get the support at home, and some have to find that support anyplace they can find it. The Coach, Teacher, Janitor, or Lunch room staff.
What I have come to learn is that vacuum makes it harder for people to spend the quality time they would like with their kids. So, by increasing those wages, you create positive energy in a persons economic ecosystem, and that energy can help feed their children. Kids sense stress, I know I did, watching my Mom struggle to provide the support our family needed. So alleviating this stress can do wonders for a kids stress, freeing up time to be a kid and student.
When they enter that school, it seems to me that the “values” and “creativity” needed to navigate our economic ecosystem should be a focus. Perhaps teaching kids to color inside and outside the lines in a way that allows them to travel across our ecosystem with a diverse skill set should be encouraged? The Old Industrial model of the 20th century does not work in today’s world. In our dynamic ever-changing world there should be tools in the tool belt that make kids feel comfortable with risk, exploration, and failure.
In the world of Academic orthodoxy this means that the higher educational nudge should be less pronounced, still an option, but one among many. Producing an ever larger number of college graduates with large student loan balances is not always a healthy outcome. So, here if we present the option of higher education, then we need to present them with the tools that allow them to manage and minimize that debt. We also need to evolve and adapt in our thinking, so that acquiring skills is more widely available and at a reduced cost. A teacher where I work told me that he helped a kid highlight four lines of his computer code, and that effort, landed the student an internship with a large company, where he is getting paid $26 an hr. The tools needed in today’s economy can be found in a multitude of area’s and not always in the “traditional” classroom. If we approached education in a way that empowered kids with the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual equivalent of a Swiss Army knife, they might better be able to employ those tools on their travels in our ever changing world?
Economic Journeyman 