Wrong in opposite ways

A couple of online comments on the public school system got me thinking.

One of them is old. Public schools prepare you for assembly line jobs.

The other criticism is fresher: Public school trains you to follow instructions, not to complete tasks on your own.

Both are wrong in opposite directions. Public schools DIDN’T prepare us for assembly line jobs, and they DID prepare us to complete tasks on our own.

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I used to hear the assembly-line complaint in the ’60s, but never really stopped to examine it. In fact school bears no resemblance at all to industrial jobs. The nearest equivalent to a schoolroom was giant secretarial pools in places like Sears, which were already gone in the 1950s.

Industry (back when it wasn’t all in China) offered a wide range of physical or partly physical jobs. Automotive assembly lines involved a lot of standing and walking. Most other industrial jobs were standing or sitting near one machine like a printing press or a plastic molder, controlling and checking its output. Retail jobs haven’t changed much, involving a mix of stocking shelves and dealing with customers. None of these resembled a schoolroom.

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Public schools did train us to be on time and turn in projects (homework, book reports, etc) on deadline. Being on time is important in life, not just jobs. The second criticism was wrong. Turning in projects was good prep for most white-collar jobs, then and now. Projects required at least one day of research, thinking, experimenting or teamwork.