When I was an undergraduate, I was asked to take a "breadth" course - something different from the science load that I was carrying.
I choose a course in ancient Greek and Roman science and technology because it was offered by our classics department and it at least had the word science in its title.
It was a very good course and I learned a lot. For example, Romans had glass drinking cups and Greeks had central heating.
As part of the course, we had to design an ancient town. It was a challenging assignment.
After all, how do you determine just what sort of people live in a town? What do they do? And perhaps more importantly, what portion of the population does what job?
I solved the problem by pulling out the Victoria phone book and searching through it for any names that were tied to a profession. I counted up the number of Taylors, Coopers and Smiths along with a variety of other names and used the distribution as the basis of my imaginary city.
My reasoning was something along the lines that names with a professional linkage should be distributed in the population in rough proportion to the number of people that practiced the profession in the past.
I must have done a reasonable job because I got a fairly good mark. But it isn't really the way that one should plan a labour force. After all, it is based on what used to be and not what is yet to come.
That is, it was social engineering based on the past and, since it was a course in ancient Greek and Roman science and technology, maybe that was appropriate. But it certainly wasn't the sort of town that could adapt to changing times.
I mention this because wholesale social engineering generally doesn't work.
There are a number of reasons but primarily it is because people have free will. You cannot force someone to become a plumber, an electrician, a chemist, a writer or any profession for that matter. In structuring a labour force, a stick doesn't work.
Even carrots are not that successful. Dangling the carrot of loan forgiveness, low tuition fees, and guaranteed work in front of high school students is not enough to induce a student to pursue a career in which they have no interest.
Which brings us to Skills for Jobs Blueprint: Re-engineering Education and Training released last week by the government.
It is a broad attempt to socially engineer a labour class with skill sets and training that more closely matches the labour market demands. Except, of course, no one really knows what the labour market demands will be five, 10, 20 or 50 years from now.
It is about giving our children "a head-start to hands-on learning in our schools."
It is about "a shift in education and training to better match jobs in demand."
And it is about "a stronger partnership with industry and labour to deliver training and apprenticeships."
At one level, this all sounds good. It is a little worrying that our schools will be turned from centres of education to places for training in hands-on professions, but on the whole it is not a bad sentiment.
However, if you dig a little deeper into the proposal, the government is not talking about new money into the educational system but re-allocating existing funds. Nearly $400 million annually and $3 billion over the next 10 years.
That means that education as we know it will undergo significant changes. Our schools will become technical training grounds.
There is nothing wrong with trades training but it should not be the focus of an education. No matter what profession one pursues, an education is necessary.
Many would say trades training is an education and that is true. No doubt about it.
But there is something about gaining basic proficiency across the academic canon that marks a complete education.
Yes, I do think that pipefitters should be able fit pipes but I also think that they should be able to spout Shakespeare or solve algebraic equations.
I do not think that streaming students at an early age is beneficial - either for the student or for society as a whole. There is so much that students miss if they are not allowed to explore. They will never find their true passion.
And if we are not talking about streaming students early, then how exactly will students get that head-start to hands-on learning in schools?
Society is made up of all types of people doing all sorts of jobs. Everything from working at McDonald's to brain surgery, from street sweeper to computer scientist, from teacher to plumber. Predicting or re-engineering this mix is a flawed social strategy.
After all, who knows what the future holds?
