History will show that as traditional test scores meant to gauge in-class learning fell in the U.S., so rose the economic prospects of that same U.S. Pundits fail to see this because they view education as some kind of other. It’s not.
For background, stop and think about the biggest and best U.S. businesses in 1925 versus 2025. Is there any similarity? What about 2000 versus 2025, or even 2015 versus 2025?
The changing team picture at the top of U.S. business isn’t a sign of economic peril. By its very description, it’s a sign of roaring American economic health. Relentlessly innovative Americans routinely replace the present and past with new ways of doing things that, by virtue of being new, can’t be taught. It’s the stuff of economic dynamism.
What’s odd is that while the nature of business continues to evolve, the educationally focused continue to judge kids on the same in-class skills acquired a century ago, and realistically more. And when the students of today reveal an apparent indifference to the rote learning that correlates with a grasp of centuries-old knowledge, the academically minded wring their hands about “these kids today.” Their emotion is overdone.
If we ignore that in-class learning never really had relevance to commercial achievement in the first place, its relevance is especially questionable now. Implied in the belief that education makes the man or woman is that those who frequently can’t (look it up) are capable of training those who can to prosper by teaching them about the past.
In a recent opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Alyssia Finley lamented that “colleges are producing many graduate degree holders with few marketable skills who then struggle to find gainful employment to repay their six-figure debts.” The bet here is that Finley could be persuaded to alter her analysis.
As a frequent writer about economic issues, Finley is aware that economic forecasts made by the PhDs who populate the profession are often only useful insofar as they make those of palm readers look wise by comparison. In his new book titled How Not to Invest, Barry Ritholtz devotes many chapters to the folly of forecasts coming not just from economists, but investment pundits, and even the best and brightest of business. The simple truth is that the commercial future is opaque, and it is precisely because the past is such a lousy predictor of the future.
Despite this, it’s routinely suggested that the choice of college major is a tell about future achievement based on the presumption about the worth of skills acquired in attaining the degree. Finley and others might agree that the conceit underlying such a view is flawed. Since the lineup of prosperous businesses is changing all the time, so are the skills required to prosper changing. These skills can’t be predicted or taught in a specific college major as much as humans are wired to adapt.
Looking at all this in terms of test scores, the speculation here is that they’ll continue to fall, lose any presumed relevance or both as the markets (meaning the kids in school) increasingly grasp the non-correlation between traditional learning and success. This will reveal itself in students who can’t name the White House occupant and who can’t do Algebra very well, but who much more importantly understand technology well enough to answer questions related to each.
Progress is defined not by what we know, but what we no longer need to know. Education isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be judged based on knowledge of the past. The markets keep telling us this, but the pundit class doesn’t seem to be listening.
