Sorry Dave.  I just can’t give you a short response on this one.  According to the Educational Industry Association (which I am sure would disapprove of your intent to disavow their existence), education in this country is nearly a 1 trillion dollar industry.  It represents 10% of the U.S. GNP and is second in size only to the health care industry.  Education related companies represent an 80 billion dollar annual revenue contribution to the economy.  I would venture to say that education is the fundamental industry of any nation and of the world.   Only today’s students and the wisdom and willingness they have to continue supporting all of the other mental and physical needs of others will continue to replenish and grow world economies and improve the lives of its citizens tomorrow.   I certainly feel that my achievements are a marketable commodity and I know for a fact that you feel the same about your own.   We both paid to go to school so we could in return get paid to apply the wisdom we obtained from that knowledge commodity.  So this is by all means and an industry from the economic sense and from the commodity sense.

This is not to say that your second point is incorrect.   Education may be an industry, but teaching is both an art and a science.  We do indeed need to take a hard honest look at the real objective for education, which is to both build human capital and bring understanding to chaos.  Capital that will circle the globe and apply real genius to solve real world problems, understanding that will allow human existence on this planet to continue.  

I do not believe we treat education as a corporate enterprise or Wall Street Investment.  I believe we indeed fail to do just that.  Where is the real board of directors for education?   Everyone need only look in a mirror to see a board member they know, or to find a real stakeholder in the outcome and profitability of our education industry.   To assume it is someone else’s responsibility to run our industry is a severe error in judgment.   Why would we treat the hard earned cash we put into education any differently than the cash we put into buying a car or a house or any other investment.  I doubt that lack of technology was the root cause of the current wave of Wall Street failures.  Likewise, there are in fact few if any studies to show technology alone improves education.  The lack of application of technology to solving education problems is only an indicator of our lackluster level of attention to demanding profitability from our investment from those we have empowered to run it.  

Why do teachers leave the profession?   I think you are close to the answer.  It is because they are artists and they are being asked to paint by the numbers, or they never really learned to paint, an ironic product of a failed educational system that sought to make them teachers to begin with.  We would never give our best artist crayons to paint a masterpiece onto the dome of the Sistine Chapel and yet we give our best teachers dusty textbooks to try and paint dynamic wisdom onto cyber based students.   Teachers do not need technology.  They need real technology tools that can perform as quality of instruments.  Instruments the minds of highly qualified teachers need to transform the raw clay of ignorance into a beautiful statue of wisdom for all to see and profit from both economically and intellectually.    

No apologies necessary, William... I'm grateful for the dialogue! : )

Don’t get me wrong... I KNOW there’s a massive amount of money involved in education.  Between government funding/grants and private industry vying for those funding dollars by producing education resources, I have no illusions that the 1 trillion dollar figure is a reality.

But if teaching is an art (and I agree... it is) then I think we’ve exposed the real problem... art and business (see also “industry”) are governed by fundamentally different principles.  

Industrialized art is an oxymoron... it’s not creative, but rather reproductive, a replication of what “worked”.  Industrialized education is suffering from the same symptoms... what once worked is no longer working.  The “authority” of the teacher in the classroom, the “dominion” of the school, and the “sovereignty” of the education system has been called into question.  The music industry found itself in the same boat a few years ago, and their efforts to maintain the status quo has resulted in the toppling of their empire.

I don’t want to see that happen to our education system.

It seems to me that our government – actually, our entire culture – is taking a “top-down” approach to the learning crisis we find ourselves in.  With more money or legislation or guidelines or mandates (like the STEM initiatives) we can somehow turn a corner.  That’s classic “industry” thinking and it’s old-school and I completely disagree.  You can’t franchise education or dangle funding carrots for scholastic achievement.

And I guess that’s my main point... money is not the answer.  It’s not the answer because it’s not the problem.  

I know, I know... funding IS an issue and a big one.  But it goes back to defining our culture’s main objective for education.  In order to understand education’s value, you need to define the objective. It’s for that reason that I disagree with the term “human capital”.  I understand what you’re saying and I even agree with the spirit of it, but...

“Capitol” implies investment, which implies a return of some kind.  With that frame of reference, I should tell my 8-year old granddaughter, “Study hard sweetie, ‘cause you have to graduate college with an advance degree in particle physics so you can develop the next boom industry that will ensure our county’s economic and military dominance.”

Or should I be saying it to her teacher?  Or the principal?  Or the school board?  

When I question the value of an education “industry”, I question a system that didn’t realize something was wrong until we looked up and saw that everyone ELSE was getting smarter, richer, and more powerful than we were.  I’m questioning the notion that the purpose of education – and by extension, the purpose of every student from K through 12 – is to get a good job, contribute to the community or the nation, and justify the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to provide that education.

All those things are SYMPTOMS of a good education, an inevitable result of twelve to twenty years in a rich and diverse academic environment.  But those can’t be the GOAL of education anymore than heavy breathing is the goal of jogging.

For me, the goal of education has always been the fostering of mastery, of giving each child the intellectual and emotional tools to understand the world and then empower them to define their OWN place in it, not the place I think they should occupy.

And if that is truly the goal, then “Top-Down” strategies don’t work well... it makes more sense to start with the student.  Determine what they need to know to stand on their own, confident that they can handle whatever challenge with which they are confronted, and pursue any path that fires their imagination.

Teach them that... and let them go.  The rest will come.

Let's take the discussion of "Human Capital" out of the work force level and into the future of our planet for example.   I think all are in agreement from this point of view.   No top down factory model, invented by Henry Ford and capitalized on by Horace Mann for the purposes of "standardizing" a random slurry of loosely knit one room school houses into an k-12 assembly line style "industry" that education has become, stands a chance of promoting the level of intelligence that will obviously be required to stop our species ultimate slide into extinction.   It is this level of intelligence that our planet, destined for a fiery  rendezvous  with meteor, or some other noxious ending is ultimately banking on for an alternative.  In the interim, we as humans are also banking on this level of intelligence or "Human Capital" to improve our overall quality of life as we alone define quality.   This may be having the latest in luxury or it may be simply having trees from which we, or our descendents, can enjoy the shade.  

Because we cannot easily educate our youth or ourselves  at zero cost, we must assume some monetary or sweat equity is at stake for the results of our teaching efforts.   If we are squandering our efforts to educate our youth such that we fail in the task and risk our combined future, are we not indeed wasting our investment in whatever form?    

I believe that most schools today will openly state their goals are to produce highly confident, meta-cognitive, independent thinkers with an ability to actually execute on the genius of their ideas.  I think this is close if not exactly your point of empowering student to find their place.  Yet, we all see our institutions , not factories, struggling with how to best scale a once one-to-one process of teacher and student no longer economical nor practical.

I think we should agree that industry is process not just commerce,  investment is effort not just money, and capital is value not just cash.  From this we can draw a conclusion that we only have symptoms of good education from which to measure potential value, we only have dollars from which to measure investment, and we only have employment by which to measure the effectiveness of the process.  

Keep in mind that the original purpose of public education was conceived only to be an optional  value to society.  It was derived only to make an education available.  Later it was mandated that the public actually take advantage of the offering.   Even later yet, within the last decade or so, it has been mandated that public education actually "work" for every student.   This is a huge challenge that has crept over from being an individual responsibility into what is now a public responsibility.    In my opinion, an "Industry", even if metaphorically speaking, our bulk education process has for the most part always been and will always remain until a better, ultimately disruptive process can evolve to displace it.    

Wow,

You two guys are tough to debate as you are both so eloquent and come from this argument with years of relevant experience. My social psychology bent tells me that it is not very accurate to view "education" or any other social institution as if it stands outside of the society in which it is bred. So, viewing what is "wrong" with our educational system or why it is viewed as a business is really like asking where did my child get that language or that bad behavior? Most of the time, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree as the old expression goes.

So, in this case, we live in a media soaked society whose shared values are pretty predictible. We seem to value things like power, wealth, fame, celebrity and the like. Then we view any occupation, industry or person cast in the light of to what degree they have succeeded in accumulating any of those things. Do teachers become famous or powerful, or wealthy? Few do - especially for good reasons. On the other hand, many people who become captains of industry manage to "succeed" by these values.

So then, let's look at the debate this way. How can a society obsessed with the values above possibly view education as anything other than an industry? Especially, when it is paying for it with their involuntary tax system. Perhaps, then, viewing education as an industry is the only way that our shallow culture can attempt to place much value on it? It's like watching a program about how valuable ballet training is to football players. Often these are meant as human interest stories. The reality is they often reveal the incredible athletic skills of "artists" who choose to express themselves by dancing. I don't see many programs or newsbytes about the incredible talent, artistry and dedication of math teachers - unless it leads to someone becoming famous, rich, etc.

I fear that until we as a society learn to be more introspective and ask ourselves why we pay people to entertain us millions of dollars and yet cannot pay teachers to educate our children, we are going to be left with basically seeing education as little more than job training. And, isn't that where we are headed these days? So, to me, the answer is to view this debate as essentially a societal / spiritual one - one better addressed by theologians and writers than by politicians.