MASKED THE PLAY

We are called increasingly in the schools to see our world through a lens of economic competitiveness, the latest of the public imperatives. Today, the focus is on Japan and Germany, with countries such as Korea, Taiwan, China, Singapore, and Brazil close at hand. We need educational settings that fully challenge young people, that provide the skills and understandings that generate ongoing learning both in the schools and in the world. We must want for our children and young people, wherever they are, the best education we can imagine. But placing so much stress on economic competitiveness—stronger math and science programs to win the war of technology, for example—is distraction, even as it is distressingly accepted by schools of all kinds. It takes too much away from the students themselves, the immediacy of their educational interests and needs. In its extreme forms, this position looks beyond the students, right past them, as if they weren’t there. Moreover, such an approach too often prevents us from seeing the world as fully connected, its peoples having mutual needs, growth everywhere being something to rejoice about. And it also easily becomes too instrumental.

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