Twenty-first-century educational reform

1. Educational Reform May Keep the American Dream Alive
By Robyn Delahunt
Vivien Stewart (2012) opens her book, A World-Class Education: Learning from
International Models of Excellence and Innovation, with a harrowing quote by Edward
Fiske which captures the reality and the gravity of Darling-Hammond’s (2010) statement
regarding our need to prepare our students for the 21st Century global market economy.
Fiske states, “If Americans are to continue to prosper and to exercise leadership in this
new global context, it is imperative that we understand the new global forces that we
have both shaped and had thrust upon us. The alternative is to be at their mercy (Stewart,
2012, p. 14).” Fiske seems to be prophesying the dire straits that the United States
economy will be in if our government doesn’t rise to the occasion and start finding
solutions to our remedy our educational system which is failing its students, teachers, and
families. Daring-Hammond’s statement regarding our need to keep up with the global
economy by retailoring our vision for public education in the United States aligns itself
with Fiske prophesy that if we do not acclimate to the new reality of our world, we will
not only continue to lose ground in the international educational community, we will lose
our status as a global competitor. The purpose of this paper is to examine how our past is
influencing our future, what steps we need to consider as a nation regarding the direction
of our educational system in the twenty-first century, and why I agree with Darling-
Hammond’s argument regarding our need to prepare our students to meet the needs of the
global economy while they are in our charge.
Mother Necessity
The early 1900’s was a time of innovation and invention. It was during a time when
ideas took root in Mother Necessity and bloomed into an industrial revolution that would
forever change the global economy and established the United States as the pinnacle of
creative problem solving and technical genius. Inventions such as the airplane and Henry
Ford’s Model-T automobile were birthed at the turn of the century, and these inventions,
along with the recent creation of the sewing machine, telephone, and light bulb changed
not only the convenience factor for mankind, it opened up a need to create a job market
that could produce these items on a mass production level. With the introduction of
factories, employees only needed to learn one aspect of the overall production in order to
successful perform their task, so education was not as great a concern. Invention and
science were left to a few brilliant people to attend to and the rest of the typical
population would support the economy by being a mere cog in the corporate machine.
Since most people, outside of the highly privileged and the extremely intelligent, did
not see the purpose of education, most children left school at a very early age in order to
help the family maintain finances and to learn a valuable skill that would better serve
them than anything they could learn in a classroom. Their learning labs were factories
and their educational institution was the school of hard knocks, but even from the ashes
and soot of the factories, many industrious children grew into enterprising adults who
would shape our ideal of capitalism into the metaphor for the American Dream.

2. Millionaires such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller proved that, with hard
work and ingenuity, anything was possible in the United States, and this inspired a great
wave of immigration into the United States in the early 1900’s. The Statue of Liberty’s
promise of providing prospect to those who sought societal, religious, and economic
freedom stimulated a greater sense of economic opportunity in both the areas of supply
and demand and human resources needed to keep up with growing demands of a country
whose population was exploding with both people and promise. Immigrants with no
education and limited English language skills could work in factories and provide for
their families while still dreaming of the prospect of financial success and societal
mobility. More people could survive and a few could thrive without a formal education
in the early to mid-1900’s because factory work was sufficient for survival and there
were no laws that required children to stay in school, but with the enactment of the Fair
Labor Standards of 1938 and the introduction of computers in the work place in the
1940’s, the global economy, industry, and education would never be the same again.
Once Again, an Apple Changes Mankind
With the creation of mainframe computers and increased technology, a need for
highly qualified and well-educated machine operators, technicians, programmers, and
engineers opened the door for greater educational intervention. Children, now protected
by child labor laws, were no longer seen as easily manipulated, entry level laborers, but
as future academic and intellectual contributors to society. Since children were now
going to be scholars, sitting in classrooms instead of lost-cost employees standing at the
assembly lines, factories owners were faced with the reality that they were going to have
to pay adult employees more competitively. As more technology flooded the market, the
need to increase the marketplace with both engineers as well production workers
provided American jobs for both white- and blue-collar workers. By the 1940’s,
computers had changed the corporate world and government agencies for decades, but in
1976, the landscape of technology and its level of public accessibility was changed by an
American twosome, both named Steve, introduced and marketed the personal computer
to the world.
In 1976, Steve Wozniak, a computer programmer and inventor, created the Apple 1,
and his visionary friend, Steve Jobs, marketed it. This dynamic duo ended up changing
the course of economic and technological history by creating and marketing a computer
for the common man and invariably cultivated a smaller, more connected global
community. The public was immediately sold on the product and this began the ever-
evolving process of creating a new and improved version of every form of technology. It
seemed that the world yearned for advanced technology and its inhabitants were willing
to pay handsomely for these technological innovations, creating a supply and demand
global market never experienced before.
The reality of the computer age created a need for educational entities to establish
learning opportunities for their public-school students to become technologically savvier
and computer literate. It also opened the door to more white-collar careers that required
more than a high school diploma. Over the next forty years, the computer age evolved
from one where machines were dependent on humans to one where humans became more
dependent on machines, making human laborers obsolete in many markets. Those who

3. can manipulate, manage, and market machines, write computer code, and improve upon
available technology are now the individuals who dominate the global market, making
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) programming a necessary
component of modern education. Countries that understand this will thrive, but those
countries that are not creating opportunities for students to build upon their STEM skills
will lose their competitive edge in the global market in the very near future.
Unfortunately, as Conley (2014) notes, the high failure rate of American students taking
Algebra and Biology inhibits student aspiration to pursue careers in science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics, growing our gap into a chasm between the U.S. and other
high performing countries such as China, Finland, and Korea regarding twenty-first
century global readiness. Most notably, Darling- Hammond reports that “at a time when
advances in science and technology fuel economic growth in East Asian and European
nations, American students rank near the bottom of industrialized countries in math and
science achievement, and if these trends continue, America will have millions jobs in
science and technology fields, “green” industries, and other fields that cannot be filled by
U.S. workers who have been adequately educated for them (2010, p. 16).”
Conclusion
The United States was built on the backs of its citizens. From our railroads and the
factories that were dependent on human resources to the plantations and the coal mines
that supplied the natural resources, physical labor was the mainstay of our early
American history, but the invention of the computer changed the labor market to where
intellectual resources have become the primary source of capitalistic and educational
success in the global community. In conclusion, the United States needs to make
education a relevant priority as a comprehensive component towards global economic
greatness. We need to stimulate greater interest in the areas of science, mathematics, and
technology, while utilizing problem solving opportunities in order to build creative and
analytical thinking skills as our primary educational objective for today’s students. By
more appropriately supporting the education system and by making STEM, creative
problem solving, and critical analysis dominate aspects of education, the United States
could regain its former status as a true competitor in all aspects of the global market.
References
Conley, D. (2014). Getting Students Ready for College, Careers, and the Common Core:
What Every Educator Needs to Know. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). The Flat World and Education. New York: Teacher's
College Press.
Stewart, V. (2012). A World-Class Education: Learning from International Models of
Excellence and Innovation. Alexandria: ASCD.