Schools need to step on the gas

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What do the bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler and the start of summer vacation tell us?

Perhaps, that the economy is changing rapidly but the school calendar is not.

The decline of the America car industry is just further evidence that a middle class lifestyle will require more education in the future than it has in the past.

A job in a car factory used to mean middle class wages and benefits virtually from the first day.

Those fortunate enough to find a job in a car factory, now and in the future, will work for far less in salary and benefits.

The management of General Motors has been criticized for many things, including providing their employees with a good salary and benefits. Obviously, pressure from the United Auto Workers contributed to this.

In recent times, the company employed about 234,000 people worldwide but was paying  health care and pension benefits to almost 500,000 retired workers.

GM was able to move some of its health care liabilities to the UAW in 2007, but it was not enough to prevent bankruptcy.

The Economist Magazine notes, while American workers spend more time on the job than people in most other developed countries, America students spend less time in class.

A typical school year in the U. S. is less than 180 days and the normal school day for many is about 6 1/2 hours. In Europe, the school year is about three weeks longer, and in Asia it’s four weeks longer.

If the school calendar has changed at all in the last 100 years, it is probably the introduction of more interruptions to the school day and less instruction time.

The three-month summer vacation dates back to the days of a farm economy, which has not existed for at least 60 years.

In Illinois, almost all the crops are harvested long after school has started in the fall.

Experts estimate that, over the summer vacation, a typical student forgets about one month’s instruction, and more than that in technical subjects like math.

Some school districts have tried to reduce summer vacations while increasing vacations at other times of the year. But this has inevitably been unpopular with almost everyone, including parents.

Only about 25 percent of American adults have degrees from four-year colleges. The U.S. has the best college system in the world, demonstrated by the fact U.S. colleges and universities award about one-third of all degrees to people from foreign countries.

The Japanese, then the Chinese and now the Vietnamese have taken factory jobs from the United States.

Like industrial jobs, there is no reason to believe that jobs requiring education, or brain power, won’t also go to the countries which provide the most for the money. There are hundreds of millions of students in China and India who will be looking to get those jobs.

“A Nation at Risk,” which warned of much of this, was published in 1983, but little has changed.

With jobs hard to find, many of those who graduated in May, might be asking why they bothered getting a degree. But over 30 or 35 years, people with college degrees do considerably better financially.

The decline of GM and Chrysler should make it clear we must do more to make our primary and secondary education systems more competitive with the rest of the world.

Michael Farrell is a staff writer for the Morris Daily Herald. He can be reached at 815-942-3221, ext. 2028, or via e-mail at mfarrell@morrisdailyherald.com.

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