My Buddy sent me a good read from Fareed Zakaria panning our current political fad for STEM education. The quote he sent me to tempt me into reading the column had to do with computer billionaires who started out in Liberal Arts but I like this quotation as much:
For most of its history, the United States was unique in offering a well-rounded education. In their comprehensive study, “The Race Between Education and Technology,” Harvard’s Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz point out that in the 19th century, countries like Britain, France and Germany educated only a few and put them through narrow programs designed to impart only the skills crucial to their professions. America, by contrast, provided mass general education because people were not rooted in specific locations with long-established trades that offered the only paths forward for young men. And the American economy historically changed so quickly that the nature of work and the requirements for success tended to shift from one generation to the next. People didn’t want to lock themselves into one professional guild or learn one specific skill for life.
I’ll go further: Zakaria explains exactly what I’d like the Duluth Public Schools to be able to provide for its students.
