Dear editor,
Education is not the same thing as workforce training … unless; of course, you are a lover of Communist North Korea’s education model. The people in North Korea have NO freedom to choose their career. The government assigns people a job “they” decide you fit based on their research of how many people are needed in each industry.
Are we as SC following this direction of a Communist nation by going along with this SC House Bill 4596 on competency based education (CBE)? Will a job here in S.C. only mean where you go to work following the government school order of where they want to place you according to testing data?
Students in North Korea cannot have any dreams about what they want to grow up to be. Sadly, the government run schools dictate what job they will have. Is this American children’s fate soon?
The original USA plan was to educate children to read, write and do arithmetic and know the Bible and the Constitution. It was thought then that children should have the necessary beginning skills to become a productive good citizen and be able to then chose their own dreams of what to pursue once graduated. Do we really want our tax supported S.C. government run schools in America selecting children’s careers based on computer adaptive tests? These CBE tests to measure competency of a certain skill set are data mining children and seeking other data on their social emotional traits as well. Parents must wake up and take over the direction of their child’s education and not be lazy and allow the state to tell your child what they will be when they grow up.
There is an agenda in place in public schools now that is NOT about receiving a well rounded education to go out into the world and pursue the American Dream.
There are teachers in our public schools as early as kindergarten telling parents during parent conference time that their child’s test scores indicate they are not college material and the parent should steer their child into a vocational job skill…such as a plumber. The day of data mining has arrived and is being used to actually select the government’s beliefs in what your child’s chosen career should be. I have no problem if a child on his own decides to go into vocational training … but to be told that is all you can aspire to be is criminal in my opinion and borders on psychological child abuse.
The sad thing is many parents trust the public school’s evaluation of their child and will be convinced their child should give up on their own aspirations and dreams of becoming a doctor or lawyer or business entrepreneur.
Thus if we do not stop this CBE agenda going forward in our public schools today the child will only be given the knowledge the school system has decided they need to perform that career path…and sadly nothing more. Then the public school will put them on a computer which is programmed to assess if they are ready to proceed to the next skill set necessary for their pre determined workforce assignment in life.
The tragedy in this CBE workforce ready model our public schools are following is the fact that when that particular career they steered that child to pursue no longer exists when they graduate… then what? You guessed it… they will have to go through an educational retraining for another skill set.
Is this really what you want for our future, where children are molded and trained for specific skill sets and NOT given a well rounded education?
Contact your S.C. Columbia Senator and say vote no on CBE legislation.
Never forget this quote: “When training supersedes education, society dies.” — C. S. Lewis.
Johnnelle Raines
Pickens