By tailoring education to suit a certain area or community instead of basing it on the national standard will affect society. The differences that will be included in this process will complicate situation when people move out of that community into another because their skills and/or academic grounding will not be the same as that of the new community and might not be compatible. Some cultural and personal preferences such as sex education in schools can be something that can be tailored to suit different communities but when it comes to fundamentals such as the basic maths and English this could prove to be a problem.
I believe that education has a major role in work culture because depending on ones qualifications this determines what career they will have and what promotions they are likely to receive. These qualifications are usually based ion a universal bench mark such as a masters Degree will entitle you to a higher position than a person with just a diploma, however if the educational system is tailored to suit different cultural needs in society giving promotions will be difficult because that universal bench mark will be removed.
A question that could be raised here is who gets to decide what the universal bench mark is? The dominant powers in society despite them being a minority society still needs to conform to their ideologies. The issue of culture also arises if cultural considerations were to be incorporated into education whose cultural values would it uphold? Again the dominant powers. In this we see the dominant powers exerting their ideas this process is known as hegemony, hegemony is a concept most popularized by the theorist Gramsci. He used the term to describe a process whereby “A condition in process in which the dominant class (in alliance with other classes or class functions) does not merely rule society but lead it through the exercise of ‘moral and intellectual leadership’” (Gramsci 2006 in Storey 2006:96)
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I agree with what you are saying Sunny, as for some areas such as sex education, people may have preferences over how they want to be educated, but for traditional subjects such as Maths and Science, I think education should be standard and the same for everyone, so we have an equal chance of succeeding and getting the same oppurtunities.
ReplyDeleteI like how you have put Gramsci's theory into this =)
Prensky is about delivery, not content of education. He promotes 'tailoring' of education to natives' preferences for games and keyboard/mouse driven activities on screen.
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