The American Learning System

Robert Samuelson has a very important column in today's WaPo explaining how the many and manifest failures of the American education system are more than compensated for by the American "learning system." By this he means the vast complex of "community colleges; for-profit institutes and colleges; adult extension courses; online and computer-based courses; formal and informal job training; self-help books" that supplement the traditional system of high schools, colleges and universities.

This supplementary system provides second chances for people to gain the knowledge that they missed out on in the formal educational process. It thus serves the needs of a motivated constituency. And, perhaps more importantly, it is market driven. In other words it is designed to answer the needs of its clients and their employers rather than the ideological predispositions of its faculties. This is practical learning and it explains why, despite the near-total failure of the American formal education system, the high-tech American economy continues to prosper.

Read the whole thing here, and then ask yourself why we continue to spend more and more money propping up an increasingly dysfunctional and irrelevant public education system.