The Schools We Need for the New ‘Cognitive Economy’ | RealClearPolitics
We are in the midst of a post-industrial revolution as profound and disruptive as the tectonic changes that launched the West s rise to prosperity, providing ordinary people with a cornucopia of goods and services. The latest economic revolution built on tiny computer chips, enormous data, and ubiquitous connectivity differs from its predecessors in at least one crucial way. Unlike the first revolution (cotton spinning) and the second (heavy industry, from oil and steel to autos), this one relies on a highly educated work force. The least skilled are being displaced by smart machines, which are built and programmed by a skilled and adaptive workforce.
This rapidly changing environment might be called a cognitive economy. It requires workers who are not only literate but numerate. That means effective training in math and science and the skills to continue that learning over a lifetime. In the United States, we simply don t have the schools to meet those needs.
Our failing public education system doesn t prepare enough students for this cognitive economy, whether the jobs involve writing code, analyzing data, developing artificial intelligence, or operating sophisticated machines. In city after city, our public schools are consigning most students the ones who don t get into selective, magnet schools to the scrap heap of this job market. Soon, the only way to support them will be never-ending transfer payments. If students from the least-advantaged households are to grasp the American Dream, if our economy is to lead this global transformation, then these dismal results have to change.