Excerpt of “Reflections of an ‘Easy Grader’” by Joel Shatzky

Although in the past, at least when I was growing up in the 1950s, there was a rough balance between the objectives of education being “learning for its own sake” and “getting a job,” the former is rarely mentioned nearly as much today as the latter. When President Obama talks about education, he urges that our country step up to the challenges of “global competition” even though a lot of the “globe” is dominated by multi-national corporations based in the U.S. and the “competition” that these corporations are engaged in is to find ways of employing high-skilled workers at lower wages. This is certainly to the detriment of students who believe a college degree will give them a good-paying job. Thus, one of the initial objectives of such educators as John Dewey, to improve the education system in order to have an “informed electorate” is being downplayed in the interest of “skilling” rather than educating young learners.

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Joel Shatzky is a retired college professor who still teaches English by working as an adjunct at Kingsborough Community College (CUNY). Shatzky contributes a regular column, “Educating for Democracy,” to the Huffington Post.