School, education, and the globalisation of competitiveness

In 1966, the Chinese dictator, Mao Zedong, was determined to ensure that there would be no threat to his continued rule.

The ensuing “Cultural Revolution” was absolutely effective at ensuring his continued dominance of China.  It was also instrumental in demolishing the entire basis for education, learning and innovation in China for forty years.

China wasn’t the only country where tyranny and ideology undermined learning and education. 

Almost by default this meant that the world’s technical, social and cultural innovation would be led by Europe and the US.  This did not mean that their education systems were good.  But they didn’t have to be.  Just by the mere fact of their existence their citizens would grow up to be more capable of productive work.

This held true throughout the last half-century.

In 1975, Deng Xiaopeng wrote to Mao Zedong declaring that university graduates were “not even capable of reading a book.” By 2004, 20 million students were enrolled at more than 2,200 higher education schools.  Better still is that, in the 2009 test of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a worldwide evaluation of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance by the OECD, students from Shanghai achieved the best results in mathematics, science and reading.  The OECD also found that even in some of the very poor rural areas the performance is close to the OECD average.

To get a sense of just how fast improvement is happening consider that in 2000 there were only 1.7 million graduates in China.  By 2008 that had reached 7.1 million.

The availability of internationally-recognisable skills is rising faster in China than are wages.  This is having a profound impact.

The lack of international competition meant that Europe and the US had a global monopoly on the best education systems.  However, these systems are dominated by state-controlled and subsidised education monopolies.

Certainly, the best schools are private – and expensive – but producing the best graduates simply means producing students who can score better on standardised tests than can students from public schools.

That isn’t particularly difficult.

There has been little innovation in the product of education.  Whether in public or private schools, students are taught in the same formalised, standardised and formulaic approach as were their grandparents and great-grandparents.

A “good” school is simply one where class sizes are smaller and teachers are more enthusiastic.  The syllabus and mechanism for education is virtually the same as any other.

Over the last fifty years telecommunications has changed completely.  Competition has driven innovation to the point where the cheapest mobile phone is more powerful than all the computer systems used to land a man on the moon back in 1959.

Business owners and investors, always looking for more efficient ways of working, have chased locations where workers are skilled and low cost.  When a worker in China was less capable than a worker in the US then manufacturing jobs were safe there.  No longer.  Workers in China are as educated as their American counterparts but cheaper and, therefore, more efficient.

Manufacturing has collapsed across Europe and the US as factories move east.

American and European governments have noted the shift and have demanded more from their education systems by throwing more money at them.  This is a choice to simply pay more for the same product.

Despite an era of miraculous technical and social change the objectives and standards for learners will remain unchanged.  Despite a massive advantage in social systems and wealth, developed nations aren’t demanding the same competition and advancement from schools as has brought so much innovation and development to their private industries.

Expect average global education levels to start to harmonise.  Without radical rethinking all this will bring is depressed wages in developed nations and eventual stagnation.

Learning is a continuous process.  Like producing the best mobile phone, the best education is always in the future.