This paper outlines the beginning discussion for a problem solving curriculum. This work is part of an extended work on the revaluing of government schooling and the importance of general theory in curriculum design. ( Knight and Pearl, 1997). Within the general argument we reintroduce the importance of relevance in curriculum. Relevance is tied to importance, but important knowledge cannot be theoretical abstraction, self proclaimed nor imposed by authoritarian pronouncement. Important knowledge is a negotiated entity. It is linked to goals that students appreciate as important. We begin the discussion of problem solving education with preparation for employment because:

1) students do not have to be persuaded of its importance, and

2) because of the exaggerated importance given to work in education.

Preparation for work provides a particularly useful way to introduce an essential feature of a democratic curriculum, ecological balance. Every educational activity has to be understood as contextual and mutually influencing; that is, lessons emphasize how an individual acts on and alters the environment and how the environment acts on and influences the individual. Ecological balance is of particular importance in preparation for work because the student not only must be prepared to enter the work world as it is, but must also be prepared to participate in the deliberations that change the nature of work. In this paper there is discussion in some detail of the means by which students learn to solve problems developmentally; an introduction to the Vygotsky notion of the importance of play in cognitive development, and an observation on how the eradication of play from school has made the classroom unnecessarily grim. The paper concludes with an evaluation of prevailing practice and suggests a transitional process from a subject based emphasis to a reconstructed school organised around problem solving.

The Saliency of Curriculum

Curriculum is the reason for schools. Everyone believes schools should be places where what students learn is important. The consensus unravels on the definition of important and who makes the decisions. Democratic education comes into play both in the definition of important knowledge and in the procedures used to arrive at the definition.

Current definitions of important knowledge AND how the definitions were reached are rarely defended by logic or by evidence within the public arena. For example, scant effort is attempted to establish the importance for what is taught in schools to students. When students ask, "why do I have to learn this?," if teachers answer at all, the answer borders on the nonsensical: "it is required" or, "you'll need it next year," "or to get into university." Students rather quickly discover that if they persist trying for better answers they will find themselves in trouble and suffer accordingly. As a consequence, those students who invest in schooling do so because they:

1) see school as an obstacle that one must hurdle as part of a course to some desired future designation,

2) derive gratifications from feelings of competence, belongingness, usefulness and understanding from participation in school activities, ( as part of a theme on ‘equal encouragement’) or

3) find that going along with the school program is less difficult than actively resisting it.

Very, very few students believe what they are learning in school is important. And these few cannot make a case for the importance of school knowledge in terms of problems that the knowledge will help them solve.

What is worse for the future of education is the absence of serious debate about important knowledge. It is possible that a subject approach to curriculum could emerge as the best way to organize important knowledge after a careful and extensive exploration of all possibilities. But such an examination has not taken place. As it is, curriculum is ordained and imposed. Commissions and committees are created (almost at whim) to issue pronouncements of needed change, (or to denounce changes that have occurred). Pressure is placed on schools to accept those changes (or to 'return to normalcy') and after the dust settles things remain pretty much as they have always been. The key actors in the educational process are never included in the discussion. Students are given no voice. Only a very small number of carefully selected parents are allowed into the decision-making. The teacher's voice, like the parent's, is very small and unrepresentative. The vast majority of teachers find themselves simultaneously attacked for real and imagined problems in the school while they are held responsible for immediate introduction of wide-sweeping curriculum changes that they neither support nor necessarily understand. Except for a brief period in the late 1970s when experiments on 'school- based' curriculum were conducted, and teacher knowledge and experience were valued, teachers in general have had limited influence in curriculum design and policy development. They have been required to implement policy from increasingly centralized mandates. The classic ‘steering from a distance’ policy model.

If the logic for existing curriculum is specious, the evidence to support it rests on even shakier ground. The primary criteria used to defend or attack what students learn in school are scores on standardized tests. These measures have never been able to successfully respond to the criticism of race, class and gender bias (National Center for Fair and Open Testing). But even if standardized tests were fair indications of what students learn in school, that learning is neither transferable or generalizable, futhermore, students cannot use school derived knowledge to solve any personal or social problem. However, it is far worse than that. The criteria used to measure school performance tend to dictate the curriculum. As tests gain increasing power in decisions that involve schools, teachers are covertly influenced or overtly coerced to teach to the test. (Bishop,1995; Cohen,1988, Darling-Hammond 1986).

Central to this proposal is that knowledge in a democratic classroom is defined as useful! Students are given reasons to believe that what they learn in school is needed to solve the problems that they recognize need solving. The problems are both personal and social. In a democratic classroom there is balance between the personal and the social. Teachers take pains to explain why that balance is necessary. Personal problems cannot be solved in an unlivable environment or in a social world destabilized to such an extent that fear of victimization prevents normal social interactions, or if the economy is unable to generate a sufficient number of good jobs for everyone, or if persons are denied access to jobs, housing or social recognition because of race, religion, ethnicity, class or gender. Conversely, social problems cannot be solved by persons overwhelmed by personal problems.

Democratic Problem Solving Education, Reintroducing Relevance into Educational Discourse.

Students have opinions and they have problems. Both are taken into consideration in the determination of useful knowledge in this proposed democratic classroom. In a democratic classroom students learn how to back up opinions with logic and evidence. And they learn how to reflexively predict the logical consequences inherent in their opinions. Currently, it is not evidenced that even our "best" students are able to support their opinions with logic or evidence, nor is there any reason to believe they have tried to calculate the likely consequences if their opinions would become social policy. An individualised subject-based curriculum, when combined with an exposition teaching method, by definition has students removed from problem solving interaction. Democratic education attempts not only to bring an intellectual defense of ideas into the classroom for the academically successful; it does the same for everyone else. All students are equally encouraged to be actively interested in becoming knowledgeable about important matters.

In the proposed Democratic Classroom, Personal and Social Problems are

Subjected to an Ecological Analysis

In a democratic classroom preparing students to deal responsibly with important problems takes the form of ecological analysis. The problem is presented as an in-teraction between the individual and the environment. The solution to the problem requires both individual adaptation and socially responsible actions on the environ-ment. The four requirements of democratic education- knowledge, participation, rights and equal encouragement- enter into every solution. A democratic curriculum recognizes humans are by nature an environmentally altering, interdependent species. The challenge is to find ways to collectively agree on alterations of the environment that both sustain livability while producing and distributing resources in a just manner, i.e., striving to create a world in which every inhabitant can enjoy a useful and gratifying life. That is a daunting challenge. It will not be perfectly met. But, if it is not presented as the background for all educational problem solving, we will continue to have what we have now, a bad situation deteriorating into something worse.

Race is one area that begs for democratic treatment. It is our failure to examine race relations in a broad social context that has left this issue unresolved, with periodic outbreaks of violence, and a similar lack of analysis resulting in continued aggression against women. It is our failure to develop an analysis that includes both environmental and economic considerations that has led to a livelihood (employment) versus livability (a healthy environment) mentality to the detriment of both a healthy environment and a healthy economy.

Race issues, gender issues, the environment and the economy cannot be treated adequately unless these are placed in the context of student preparation for an existing although rapidly changing work world. Discussions about race, gender, the environment and economics become exercises in sophistry unless the distribution of work and its availability plays a central role in that discussion.

On one hand education about work must demystify the existing and projected work world so that every student can make an informed choice for a future occupation. On the other hand the student has to be provided with information and helped to develop an analysis that would inspire every student to participate in the invention of an economy, and more narrowly a work world, that has the potential to provide everyone with useful and fulfilling employment.

Examining preparation for work. The simplest but most unsatisfactory part of the problem from an educational viewpoint is preparing students for the existing work world. Even this simple problem has its complications. Preparation for work is per-ceived as a fundamentally different problem by students and employers. Students, who desire from their schooling the skills, the knowledge, the experiences and the understanding that would qualify them for "good" jobs, perceive the problem as limited access to, and eligibility for, good jobs. Employers perceive the problem as schools failing to provide them with the quality of workers they claim they once had and now need. The National Commission appointed by of President Reagan, in its celebrated 1983 Report- A Nation at Risk- condemned state run schools for failing to prepare the work force needed by the United States to remain competitive in the emerging transnational economy. Similar charges have been leveled in every country striving to be competitive in a global economy e.g., Australia ( DEET, 1991). Student concerns have not been considered in these analyses; to the contrary, the preponderance of criticism condemns permissiveness, i.e., inviting students into the decision making process. The prevailing opinion is that education suffers from too much "democracy" (Chubb and Moe, 1990).

A democratic classroom encourages students to carefully assess the validity of, the ‘Nation at Risk’ and DEET ( Department of Employment, Education and Training- Australia) arguments while also analyzing the employment opportunities that existing economic policy has created. Students should be encouraged to question: Are there sufficient employment opportunities for everyone to have a fulfilling job? Is the current approach to the production and distribution of goods and services sufficient to provide everyone with a quality life? It falls to the democratic teacher to encourage and provoke students to invent and defend with logic and evidence systems that could provide better solutions than that which they criticize. The analysis of what is, and the examination of various proposals provides students with the opportunity to debate a wide range of proposed policies and identify the positive and negative features of each. Part of that analysis is to help students arrive at some unifying conceptions of quality life, acceptable levels of unemployment, means by which work is created, the differential impact on the environment of different approaches to work, and the means by which work can be accessed.

All Education is "Vocational Education" -- Unfortunately

Preparing students for the work world is fast becoming the sole credible justification of secondary and higher education.( Lauglo,et al, 1988) Learning for the sake of learning may inspire some academics; it sounds pompous and stupid to most young people. Some stay in school solely to play sports, and even in this instance there is often a vocational component bouncing around as part aspiration and part fantasy. This is especially true for those students who have not been encouraged toward academic success.

How Vocational Education Currently "Works"

Vocational education continues to be organized as a static entity. The work world is perceived as an unalterable given, the curriculum is fixed and fed to the student who is then stamped as prepared for some small segment of work. Characterisically, the curriculum has little intellectual challenge. The student is more trained than educated. The school system places all the onus for failure on the student (although from outside the school system considerable blame is placed on schools for failure to adequately prepare the student). Vocational education is linear and undynamic. The individual student enrolls in a particular vocational program and upon satisfactory completion of the program is certified as welder, or clerk-typist, auto repair, or computer maintenance and repair, or food service worker, etc. and thus is eligible to seek employment in that particular field. That many are unable to find employment in areas where they have been deemed qualified, and conversely, many find themselves in these field without benefit of a vocational education has not altered the approach significantly. The system is not only authoritarian, arbitrary and inflexible; it is also extremely inefficient. Feedback is inconsistent and frequently non-existent. Employer contact is hit and miss and often more condemning than useful. Student feedback is too rarely considered in program reform to be a significant factor. Moreover, in times of rapid change, it becomes a virtual impossibility for school based vocational education to keep up and thus students are trained on obsolete equipment.

In reality, the schools meet most of the assigned responsibility for work preparation through culling, i.e., separating those who will use higher education to obtain credentials needed for professional careers from those limited to unskilled, semi-skilled, or no occupations.

Although schools long have been given the responsibility for preparing students for the work world, little respect has been given for what was being done. Every decade or so the approach to vocational education is revised. Titles and course descriptions are changed. What never changes is a patently undemocratic social reproduction. Schools continue to prepare different strata of students for very different work futures. The process begins early with ability grouping in the elementary schools, becomes rigidly defined in educational tracks and subject selection in the secondary school, and is further reinforced with the credentials that can only be obtained by the small minority of students allowed entry first into higher education and then to graduate professional schools (Oakes, 1985). Such an approach serves to restrict the number of applicants for high pay- high status positions to manageable proportions. Deeply ingrained throughout - among teachers, administrators and students - is the belief that ability and motivation vary so greatly that maintaining all students in the same educational stream is absurd. Thus curriculum is split to accommodate believed differences in capacity and desire. Status goes to the tertiary preparation courses and subjects, to the people who teach them, and to the students who take them. Subject streams become as categories of selection, and different meanings are attached according to gender, race, ethnicity, and social class (Edwards, 1996; Oakes, 1992; Selvin, 1992). Thus, relay effects of historical arrangements by race, ethnicity, gender and social class are sustained. The well situated continue to get most of the good jobs, the farther down the economic ladder, the less there is available. The maintenance of a prejudicial system can be challenged on fairness, but there may be an even worse consequence from such a system. The lack of democracy may produce an inadequately prepared work force at every level. The current system locks out the vast majority of the lower income strata from the opportunity to become medical doctors or rocket scientists and, as a consequence, potentially valuable talent is not permitted to develop. The other side of such a divisive system is that many of those bestowed with august credentials may have only illusory competence.

There have been some well advertised attempts to build partnerships between the business community and schools where businesses generate the work sites and the schools tailor the instructional program to the challenges encountered on the job. These modified apprentices programs have not been very successful. Schools have great difficulty changing curriculum to meld it with job related experiences. Furthermore in the most successful programs the entry job, from which there is limited upward mobility without continued education, is often far more gratifying than school experiences (Dayton & Pearl 1987), which means that these programs stimulate premature school withdrawal. It is impossible to have an equitable school to work program as long as the notion of differential ability is so pervasive, or where ‘choice’ is tied to a ‘needs- based’ definition of equity. ( Gewirtz, et al, 1995: 190)

In a democratic classroom students make the choices. They are provided the knowledge they need to make an informed choice.

This begins with demystification of the work world.

Democratic preparation for existing work begins with a serious effort to determine what a student would need to know to make a responsible choice about future work. The necessary knowledge and related experiences are organized developmentally in coherent scope and sequence. From the individual student's perspective, the problem is: What do I need to know, and do, to get the best possible job? And from the student as citizen perspective, the problem is: what employment policy should I support for the common good, i.e., in the best interest of society?

The individual problem of career choice, and the social problem of the optim-unemployment policy cannot be solved without access to a relevant body of infor-mation. As background, every student should be provided with core knowledge about the terrain of the work world and projections for the future. They should learn to use such resources as as the Statistical Abstract, the Internet, OECD projections, European Commission(CEDEFOP) supplements, and various local resources to examine employment, unemployment and (those not accounted for), by age, education, gender, race and ethnicity. Students (preferably working in groups) would then present various findings to the class or school parent groups, and at some stage to state government committees and local councils. The findings are an invitation to broad ranging discussions with effort made to identify and assess many possible interpretations. One of the interpretations that will surface will derive from deep-seated distrust of any statistics and that concern will become a part of an ongoing discussion. Students need to be able to their own satisfaction establish the validity of any statement, and struggle to find ways to develop shared understandings of "truth." They will struggle to find satisfactory answers to the following questions:

Do the findings of differential employment success by race, ethnicity, gender and class reflect employer bias?
Does the bias of existing workers on jobs tend to drive minorities away?
Do the differences reflect a different quality of education different categories of students receive?
Is it a matter of logistics- not being where the jobs are? Where are the jobs?

By studying work trends students learn that the demand for educated workers continues to increase, but that the increase is uneven. In the US for example, no more than one-third of the currently employed work in jobs that require more than a high school diploma or two years in post secondary school. The ripple effect from this powerful economy is measurable as trend in smaller economies such as Australia, down the line. As long as "good" jobs exist in far fewer numbers than there are job seekers, the competition for them will be intense. And given that reality, the pressure on parents to secure for their children a competitive advantage will also be intense. This intensity is reflected powerfully in the ‘classifying practices’ of the proactive education consumer.( Gewirtz, et al:1995,Ch.2). Students should examine the range of possibilities that exist when the demand for good jobs vastly exceeds the supply of those jobs, and they should be made aware of the efforts that have been made to maintain special privilege and competitive advantage.

In developing proposals for employment policies students should also examine what the future holds? Will current trends continue? What is likely to happen in good times? During recessions?

Richard Freeman of Harvard University, found when overall unemployment declines by one percentage point the employment rate increases by 1.9 percentage points for all youth, but by 4.3 points for Black youth (Breslow, 1995, p. 2).

Unemployment jumps during recessions, but economic downturns are not the only factor that affects employment. Changing outlooks and restructuring has its effects as well. In recent years the highest skilled have been victims of layoffs as multinational corporations downsized, reengineered and outsourced. Students should through discussion and research demystify these terms and consider them in their proposed policy initiatives. Articles such as the seven part series that appeared in The New York Times in the midst of a prolongued economic upturn detailing the insecurities that "A Downsizing of America" has wrought (New York Times, 1996, March 3-9) can be used to instigate a a critique of the distribution of work and stimulate proposed alternatives that can be researched and debated. Part of any education for work must deal with that uncertainty and students need to examine possible avenues for increasing job security. Students should also dis-cuss the role of government as a part of the ongoing employment picture, both as regular public services and as last resort short term employment during down turns in the economy. In a sense every secondary school should in its treatment of work policies organize itself into a "think tank" merging the attributes, for example, of the conservative (Hoover Institution; Heritage Foundation) and the liberal (Institute for Policy Studies) as well as "think tanks" that can not be neatly categorized.

What do all of these "statistics" and new terminologies have to do with education for work?

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.

A. E. Housman, Epilogue

What we know about the work world becomes the primary resource out of which curriculum and instruction that address problems in that area are developed. The first requirement of a democratic education is providing all students with sufficient knowledge to make an informed decision on his or her work future. Students must not only know the statistics; they must know how the statistics were derived. They must also be provided with challenges to these statistics, alternate descriptions and explanations and, if the general conclusion is that prospects are poor, different ideas for improving the situation. Education for and about work is, like all education, an examination of various proposals, assessment of different approaches and the logic and evidence on which these are based. Such education involves debating different ideas in different contexts and with differing assumptions. Students need to be prepared to deal with good and difficult times.

A Democratic Approach to Work Preparation is Developmental

Preparation for work in the primary school. Very early in a school career children should be given a carefully grounded sense of the relationship between education and work. In primary school students should become realistically familiar with the organization and distribution of work. They should gain a firm grasp of what people do in various occupations and what it takes to get into those occupations. This can be done in many ways. Medical doctors, computer programers, lawyers, bus drivers, chefs, accountants, etc. can be invited to converse with students in classrooms. Students should prepare for these visits with teacher led classroom discussions and by conducting rudimentary research. The visits by people in different occupations should be followed with debriefing sessions. Students can also visit work sites and reflect on what was seen afterwards. Literature and biography are necessary components in preparation for informed choice of future work. For example, students could do research on scientist Marie Curie, the only woman to win two Nobel prizes. Students can examine her early life, how she became interested in science and what she did as a child for fun. Students should be able to present to other students a dramatic sketch on Marie's choice of science as a life career, what particular things she did as a child to move her in the direction of her life's work, what kind of encouragement she received, etc. In a similar way, other figures such as George Washington Carver, Elizabeth Blackwell, Karl Frederich Gauss, Maria Montessori, Sally Morgan, Eddie Mabo, etc. can come to life as persons to be understood and emulated. Biographies should not emphasize uniqueness or "genius" qualities, but rather how and what a particular person did to prepare for a life's work and what can be learned from a particular life that can be useful in organizing one's own future. Visits, stories and biographies must be integrated and organized for active problem solving- the selection and securing of a career or, more realistically, several careers. Unconnected bits and fragments passively learned may actually be worse than no discussion about work.

The understanding of work as preparation for informed choice has to be woven through a variety of classroom experiences While it is impossible to expect all work to be equally valued, it is both possible and desirable that all work be treated with respect. In their reading and their discussions with a wide range of occupations students should be encouraged to discover how humans derive gratifications of competence, usefulness, belonging, security, hope, excitement, meaning and creativity in almost every work activity. An overemphasis on credentialism and a glorification of wealth can create dissension in families and lessen the respect children have for what their parents do for a living. Shame rather than admiration and pride for what parents do is the logical consequence of most school approaches to work. This is only one of many ways that schools become accessories to youth 'marginalization', 'drift' and high risk activities. (Carrington,1993; Knight, 1985; 1997; Polk and Shafer, 1972)

No occupation should be viewed as demeaning but at the same time it is important that the presentations be such that choice is open-ended. Primary age students should be encouraged to dream and the rest of their education should be organized to help them make their dreams a reality. The delineation of a path to a dream with specification of pitfalls and detours brings necessary uncertainty and excitement to the education. The student should be made aware of the likelihood of achieving an aspiration in elementary school and be given every opportunity to fully appreciate what must be done to accomplish the goal. In many ways the re-creation and refinement of dreams is at the heart of primary education. The Irish poet W B Yeats speaks to the importance of dreams. His poem can initiate a discussion and stimulate an ongoing commitment to the dream process. The more "disadvantaged" the student, the more important are the dreams.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W B Yeats "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" 1899

In a democratic classroom students are asked to unleash imaginations. And there is no place where this is more important than in the consideration of "what I am going to be when I grow up." That few of us have realized the dreams of our youth does not lessen their value. Dreams provide focus and exhilaration in tough times. An extraordinary part of the excitement and allure of sport for the young is the dreams that is attached to the activity. Who among hasn't pictured himself winning a Cricket Test Series by making the winning run, or herself returning one of Steffi Graf's powerful serves for the winning point at Wimbledon, or hitting the winning World Cup final hockey goal. Who, when shooting baskets alone hasn't said to him or herself, "it's 2 seconds to go we're behind 100-98" just before launching a jump shot from beyond the 3 point line.

A child can survive every disappointment in primary school except dream-killing. Take away the dreams of children, particularly children mired in poverty and surrounded by crime, violence and squalor and you do more than abandon them, you brutalize them. When students stop dreaming, ugly things begin to happen. When dreams are killed, nightmares take their place. When children cease to dream the pessimistic "reality" of drugs and gangs and violence and sexually transmitted diseases and children having babies takes over. The killing of dreams brings out the worst in all of us. And a lot of dream-killing takes place in primary school. Dream-killing is one of the devastating effects of the sorting process. When students are sorted they are told in no uncertain terms what dreams are permissible. When students are ticketed for low status work stations their dreams are trampled. By the fourth grade students have been given very clear indications what they can dream. In a democratic classroom students dream and their dreams are represented in writing, or pictorially, on film, by music, or as a theatrical work. As mentioned, earlier, biography and literature can help add substance to a dream.

The major goals in primary school in the area of vocational education is to build a foundation of knowledge that can be used for decision-making in the existing work world, and to instill a spirit of openness to new ideas. All students should be discouraged from decisions that would preclude a later reconsideration. In the primary grades the emphasis is on the positive features of all careers. But positive does not mean sugar-coating or distorting.

Currently, children in primary school learn about work in much the same way they learn about history, Africa or Mars- in the absence of context. Work is presented as a fixed and mysterious system. There is not the slightest suggestion that work is created in response to social and economic policies. That is, tax strategies and other fiscal policies, occupational health, disability, environmental protection and other regulations, wage policies and union negotiations, licensing, trade policies, and the government as first, last or non-employer all strongly influence employment opportunity and in many instances determine who works at what. Ariel Dorfman, (The Empire's Old Clothes, 1983), argues that children are unable to develop well organized social philosophies because they are fed a distorted history presented in the tradition of Babar the Elephant at best, (the glorification of "progress' and the elevation of western culture and civilization above all others), or in the tradition of Walt Disney at worst, (the denial of history). Work in primary school is presented as either a distortion of reality or is disconnected from reality. The grim and unhealthy aspects of work should not be overdramatized, but it is essential that elementary students be given a realistic foundation for their future work life.

Once a foundation has been established students should be given a general idea of the skills and knowledge required for different occupations and how work is or-ganized by ladders and lattices. The science base of a medical education should be explained, as should the relationship between medical doctors and others in the health providing occupations, such as nurses, health administrators, technical assis-tants, etc. The skills and knowledges required for occupations should be dissected and arranged developmentally. Efforts should be made to explain to students HOW what they are currently being taught prepares them for future academic work and HOW this in turn prepares them for different careers. In the primary grades students should receive road maps to different work futures and be encouraged to travel extensively along a variety of paths before deciding on a life career.

The general value of play in school. Next in importance to dreams in elem-entary school is play. Play is an important element in all school activity and remains important as the child develops. The characteristics of play, however, changes as children develop. In the earliest years play is an introduction to school and smooths the transition from that which a person does just for fun and that which is tied to a mandatory responsibility. Mark Twain in Tom Sawyer conveys the way most of us have come to look at work. "Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do." (Tom Sawyer, 1876, Chap 2). School is perceived to be the equivalent of work by most if not all children. That is in part because of the overly close identification of school to vocational preparation, and partly because of the widespread belief that students must be coerced to learn. The heavy emphasis on coercive education is increasing-ly burdensome over time, negatively affecting both student and teacher. Play is an invitation to students to be creative, to use imagination. But play is neither undisciplined or anti-intellectual.

Play is an important element in every phase or aspect of democratic education. Every curricular emphasis can be improved with play. Seemingly insoluble problems take on new dimensions when students are encouraged to play with solutions.

Playfulness as students grow older has to be directed to imaginative solutions, and becomes less egocentric and more sociocentric. As most children develop, their play becomes more social and less solitary.

The choice of preparation for work to introduce and discuss play was because of observations of how much children like to play at work when they are very young, and how the fun aspect of activity tends to be extinguished as they grow older.

Being drawn to play was through an interest in Vygotsky. Vygotsky in Mind and Society (1978) attributed a number of important qualities to play and its relation to cognitive development that should be considered by educators. He emphasized the importance of motivation and the attachment of motivation to needs. Failure to attend to student needs will necessarily lead to the stunting of cognitive growth. As far back as Pestalozzi (1746-1827) the relationship between need gratification and cognitive growth was clearly established; and yet, there is very little application of that principle in schools today. Nowhere is the lack of appreciation of need gratification more apparent than in preparation for work. To complicate matters, educators need not only to know how to gratify needs at any particular moment, but they must further understand how motivation and needs change as students grow cognitively and how these changes are to be incorporated into the planning and evaluation of classroom activities.

Vygotsky argued that young children need activities that bring immediate grat-ifications- 'no 3 year old wants to do something a few days in the future.' Here, his views can be contrasted with Sigmund Freud's "pleasure principle." The difference is that Vygotsky believed the child's insistence on immediate gratification is grounded in reality, albeit a primitive reality (Kozulin, 1990), while Freud argued that the ego develops through encounters with reality and in that process learns how to delay gratification. In other work in progress on ‘equal encouragement’ ( Knight and Pearl, 1997,Ch.9) show how the "pleasure" and "reality" principles have undergirded one explanation of differences by class in scholastic achievement, thereby deflecting attention away from the ways an inequitable system perpetuates itself. Though attracted to Vygotsky, there are also important differences. While immediate gratification is important at every age, and that the differences in school success by class, race, ethnicity and gender, can be explained by the way classroom is organized to provide immediate gratifications of such vital needs as security, relief from unnecessary pain, meaning, belonging, usefulness, competence, excitement, creativity and hope to some students, while denying these gratifications to others.

Vygotsky, unsatisfied with previous definitions of play, makes imagination the defining characteristic of play. While emphasizing motivation he also drew attention to the relationship that motivation has to cognitive processes and the importance of context- the particular circumstances of play. But probably even more important to educators, particularly democratic educators, is his understanding the role of play in cognitive development.

To Vygotsky the imaginary situation in any play is organized by rules. He uses as an example a child playing mother with a doll which he insists can only occur if the child obeys the understood rules of maternal behavior. As children develop their use of imagination, play changes. Over time, children's play evolves from games with an overt imaginary situation with covert rules to games with overt rules and covert imaginary situations (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 96).

Play at any age allows imagination to stretch meaning, but as the child grows older the more he and she is bounded by "reality." This does not end the importance of play in education. But for play to be a powerful influence in the education of older children, the rules have to be universally accepted and fairly applied and the em-phasis has to be shifted to imagination. There is no better place to put imagination to work than in encouraging students to think about future careers and in imagining how a society should organize work.

Play as preparation for work. Children love to play grown-up. Playing doctor, lawyer, carpenter, storekeeper, engineer, scientist, etc is a critically important aspect of a democratic classroom. Such play if allowed to develop and integrated with reading, field trips, discussions will establish important foundations. Without teacher inter-vention it is likely that the boys will play doctors and the girls nurses. Play reveals prejudices and stereotypes. These become invitations to discussion and if kept within the framework of play much can be accomplished without disrupting the development that comes from spontaneous actions. ( an example of positive play is contained in the ‘Impossible Game’ - Appendix,1) A teacher might suggest the game be replayed but with girl the doctor and the boy the nurse. Such intervention by an adult may disrupt the play and take from it its spontaneity. That is not necessarily bad. The teacher can sustain the play through discussion and variations of a theme. Students may resent teacher intervention and refuse to play, or otherwise respond negatively. But development is a long slow and uneven process and momentary setbacks are to be expected and should not be allowed to interfere with long range educational goals. It is during these periods of strain and setback that a corollary of play, humor comes to the fore.

Work preparation in the middle years.(grades,7-9) In middle schools students are given a realistic picture of the opportunity structure. In these years the credential society is demystified. In very clear and precise terms the relationship between school and work is described and explained. Students are encouraged to connect what they are currently doing to future plans. In a very real sense dreams are transformed into plans in the middle grades. In these years students are introduced to the connection between economic policy and job creation. School projects- a theatrical production, a television station, a clean-up campaign, a school store, etc.,-should be modeled after existing work situations (in the middle school students should play at work). In debriefing discussions students will become more aware of the how work is organized, what specific tasks are to be performed, the skills to be mastered, and gratifications that can be obtained from such work. There is virtually no activity in a middle school that cannot be connected to work and that includes teaching. Middle school students should be involved in cross age tutoring, peer instruction, cooperative learning and peer counseling. Connect,(1997)

Play as preparation for work in the middle grades changes in character. By middle school, rules in play have long ceased to be covert; moreover, from a play per-spective what students know about work (which they associate with school) have led them to believe that rules have become necessarily rigid and thus rules rob play of that which makes it enjoyable. For play to be useful as preparation for future work in the middle school the emphasis must be on its imaginative aspect and that is the feature that has been most discouraged. The last thing vocational educators believe future employers want are students who are imaginative about work. The emphasis in vocational education has always been on developing a dependable, generally skilled and adaptable worker, but most importantly one that abides by the rules. Even if employers were convinced it was in their interest to have an inquiring active intelligence as an employee, rather than a passively docile worker, that would not necessarily result in a more informed questioning and creative work force. Teachers would have to initiate a fundamentally different approach to to curriculum- this will not be easy to do. Teachers have taken pains (and by the reality of the job), to position themselves as far from the realities of a work world that is insecure, constantly in flux, and highly competitive. Thus teachers would continue to emphasize obedience rather than initiative partially because that is what they believe employers want; but far more importantly, that is what THEY want from their students. Teachers need to be convinced that imaginative play is a critical ingredient in a vocational program for all ages, and most importantly for the middle school years.

The easiest means by which students can play with work is through simulation. Simulation can vary from the highly technical and complex to the simple. Computer simulation is intriguing and offers a wide range of possibilities, particularly if sustained over a long period of time. Not all schools will have such capability, al-though teachers should have given thought to how advanced technology will be used before it arrives in the classroom. The absence of technology should not inhibit the use of play in the classroom. Simulation through roleplay (psychodrama or sociodrama) will do just fine. Beginning efforts can be crude but even these rough efforts should be organized into a coordinated scope and sequence. Every activity in a school should lead to a more challenging activity. Roleplay is valuable in its own right. It becomes more valuable depending on the quality of the discussion that it stimulates. But it should not stop at that. Televising the roleplay adds to its value, and like video replays for athletes, offers instant opportunities for analysis and reflection.

. In time the classroom could become a production studio with a wide range of different employment possibilities. Middle schools are are ideal for play to mature and merge significant cognitive growth with the development of a wide range of skills that have future employment possibilities.

Care should be taken to not overemphasize the future economic value of this kind of activity. While the skill and cognitive development in work oriented play is a vital part in preparation for future work, the play can assist students in any important problem solving. Furthermore the gratifications that come from the play and the cognitive development that play makes possible can and should be transfered to other school projects.

Preparation for work at the senior secondary school (yrs. 10-12). At this level of the secondary school students should have arrived at a stage where they can do serious research. They will have had a range of meaningful work and simulated work experiences. These experiences should include shadowing people in work sites and apprenticeships. In discussions about work they are expected to be able to link aspirations with specific characteristics of a desired occupation.

The primary responsibility of work preparation in secondary school is to discourage premature foreclosure on aspirations. One of the unfortunate consequences of authoritarian schooling is the powerful negative impact it has had on imagination, particularly in the area of preparation for work. The locking into a limited vision of future work- nongratifying school experience, desire for economic independence, the need for income as a response to the powerful force of consumerism and the general availability of "youth" work (fast food establishments, etc.), all have negative impacts on a preparation for life long work.

Play at the secondary school level is continued use of imagination about transforming existing work. More imaginative play is directed at economic planning. Students should be able to make critical appraisals of the credential system, alternatives, and should be prepared to evaluate proposed ways to democratize the work world. Secondary school students use play to, in a sense, return to their early years. The preoccupation is again with rules, but now the interest is in changing the rules. Throughout the student's school career there has been little opportunity to analyze the rules that govern work, nor has there been the developed capacity to examine alternative systems with different systems and rules. The idea that education is a necessary prerequisite for work is one of the seemingly unchallengeable rules about work. Students can play with the idea that work should be a prerequisite for school. As secondary school students begin to use their imagination about work other rules come into play, the rules that determine definitions of work, and the rules that determine compensation are all open for consideration.

Some Guiding Considerations about Preparation for Work.

In a democratic classroom choices are not made for students, nor are students discouraged from considering ANY possible future career. If, for example, a student diagnosed with severe intellectual impairment should aspire to be a nuclear physicist, the role of the democratically oriented teacher would be to:

1) describe exactly what a nuclear physicist does;

2) describe what the student would need to learn at this time and in the future to attain such a goal; and

3) encourage that child to the same extent she or he would encourage a student believed to be intellectually gifted.

In a democratic classroom the alleged intellectually disabled student should have the same access to all of the available resources as the "gifted" student.

Already one can hear the crescendo of voices screaming at such a proposition, "That is cruel. Encouraging people beyond their capabilities only programs them for failure, wounds their egos, damages self-esteem and in other ways does irreparable harm." Democratic teachers give a reasoned response to such an argument. Trying and not achieving could be interpreted as failure. However, by not permitting a student to try, failure, wounded ego and irreparable harm are guaranteed. Encouraging all students to try does not mean that all will succeed. Even when participation is as restricted as it currently is, not every participant succeeds. When only the "gifted" are admitted to some elite institution, some fail. From a democratic perspective the problem is not "the failing" but the interpretation given to effort. With a hierarchical orientation, winning becomes everything. In democracies effort is appreciated. A democratic education not only levels the playing field, it also redefines failure. In a democratic classroom trying cannot lead to failure. The gratification derived comes from participation in the process- in the knowledges and skills gained, the friendship, the security that comes with a sense of understanding of how the world works, excitement in the opportunity to compete, etc.

The challenge for a democratic classroom is to find ways to incorporate vocational and academic education. Part of that challenge is to be persuasive in preventing students from prematurely foreclosing on their options and part of the challenge is in keeping everyone eligible for all possibilities.

How Does Existing Vocational Education Fit Into a Democratic Preparation for Work

Traditional vocational education goes in a direction diametrically opposite from that which is proposed here. Currently structured vocational education is anti-democratic in both theory and practice and is tied to social reproduction. If a student is assigned to a vocational education track that student is not tertiary bound. The distances between the two tracks are too large to bridge both in ways people think and in the ways the programs are organized. Movement toward a democratic education begins by narrowing the gap between the academic and the vocational. The narrowing has to go in both directions. The vocational tracks should be accompanied with a more challenging academic curriculum. Rather than "dumbing down"( insulting the intelligence of students) maths, language and science the intellectual underpinnings of these "subjects" should be enhanced. The more "subjects" can be connected to work the more relevant the "subjects" can be made. Subject knowledge can be used to enter into and solve problems associated with work. But straining at relevance has often contributed to anti-intellectuality. Vocational education can be upgraded by stressing the importance of keeping options open and by generalizing competence where it has been exhibited, to where students have not demonstrated either mastery or confidence.

The overemphasis on vocation not only contributes significantly to social reproduction but it can also lessened the appeal that other aspects of education can and should have. An education with a broad base appeal and whose activities are connected will go a long way to reduce student alienation and counter the system's hierarchical tendencies.

Upgrading current vocational education can only be partially successful, but partial success can lay the foundation for more powerful changes. Thematic instruction, cooperative learning and interdisciplinary approaches in vocational education, or in any other curriculum area are in of themselves insufficient. However these rather small and tentative changes in educational practice open the door for more fundamental change. Recent efforts to reform education can be significant first steps to important change; they also represent tragic ends if not seen as first steps.

New Business Driven Initiatives- 'School to Work'

One element of a a business orientation to education has been the promotion of privatization; another is business telling schools what they ought to do. This latter thrust is most apparent in preparation for work. Business leaders have never been satisfied with the worker schools have prepared for them. In recent years the criticism has become increasingly shrill. Such criticism was at the heart of the President's Commission on Education (National Commission, 1983). Efforts have been made to involve business more in guiding schools to better prepare students for work. These schools to work initiatives feature the development of student businesses, job shadowing, mentoring, school-business partnerships, youth apprenticeships and job training. None of this is particularly innovative. All have been tried before in various combinations with limited success. There is the belief that student will be far more ready for work with more serious business investment in schools. Virtually no data support such optimism. Considerable excitement has been generated by one particular business connection with work bound students- mentoring. It is firmly held that when practical minded businessmen serve as mentors the youth they serve will get that practical dose of reality that has been missing in their current education. At present such expectation is a declaration of faith. It is possible that some students may benefit from some mentors and it is important that this relationship be carefully evaluated. It is also possible that there will be a serendipitous effect- employers will gain a deeper appreciation of the difficulty of teaching in currently constructed underresourced urban high schools and do something substantial to alter those dreadful conditions..

The school to work initiatives tend to ignore the profound effects of "outsourcing" and "reengineering. The only recognition of a rapidly changing work world in the most recent school-to-work efforts is encouraging students to develop broadly applicable skills rather than focusing on skills that can be applied to only one type of job.

The absence of an informing general theory creates strains between the work aspect of schools and the academic requirements. The effort to patch a vigorous school to work program on the existing school is not likely to persuade many acad-emic teachers of its importance. In that sense a school to work progam attached to the existing curriculum, methods of instruction and school organization deforms rather than reforms education.

Educationalists can support all of the proposed activities in a School to Work program, e.g., partnerships, mentoring, apprenticeships, job shadowing, mentors, but only when they are incorporated into a general education theory. Otherwise the new school to work will resemble the old vocational education and be a vehicle for sophisticated tracking, while providing students with a distorted picture of the way work is currently organized and never initiating discussion on the transformation of work. Without serious efforts to meet all four democratic education requirements- sufficient knowledge to inform work policy and equal encouragement to compete for desirable jobs, meaningful universal student participation in decisions that affect their lives (which would include participating in the formation of the school to work program), and respect for fundamental individuals rights while at the work site as well as in the classroom- it is highly unlikley that School-to-work will overcome the obstacles that are currently encountered. (Lynn, 1996).

Democratization of Work - One Suggestion, the New Career

Approach - an alternative to work for the dole programs.

The pressures to sort students and orient them to different stations in life are very powerful and under conditions where the rewards are so disparate will be exceedingly difficult to irradicate. A democratic effort to prepare for work without a parallel developmental curriculum to alter the work world is no remedy for an already near impossible situation. As mentioned earlier humans are an environmentally altering species and there is no area of life in which the alteration has been more significant than in the the way work has changed in the past century. These changes are the result of social policy. The results rarely meet expectations. But that too should be part of the the analysis of social policy undertaken by students nearing high school graduation.

It is difficult to democratically prepare students for work when work itself has been so resistent to democratic practices. Credentialism has been one very powerful way in which existing work has been organized undemocratically. Credentials have been imposed. The establishment of credentials has been an effective means by which access to "good" occupations has been severely restricted. Credentials have also greatly enhanced the role of education in the work world since credentials are issued only to people who have completed rigorously defined courses of study. The justification for credentials is the protection of standards. What has not been established is whether the credentials are in fact standards or obstacles. There are two fundamental issues in the examination of credentials from a democratic perspective: one, concerns whether credentials are necessary to maintain a high level of service or production; the other, the means by which credentials are to be obtained. "New Careers" dealt with the latter concern. "New Careers" also provides an example of the creative use of play. It has an interesting history.

. With the help of Doug and Joan Grant, Arthur Pearl and Frank Reismann invented New Careers for the Poor (Pearl & Riessman, 1965). They believed "New Careers" illustrated the role of play in the more advanced stages of cognitive development. In "New Careers" the explicit rules for the attainment of credentials was not changed. The power given to credential granting institutions was not reduced. The creative effort was restricted to the means by which the credentials were to be obtained. With "New Careers", Pearl and Riessman attempted to answer criticism for suggesting that the "unqualified" poor should receive the majority of poverty program funds since these were "soft monies", and would no longer be available once the program was discontinued thus leaving the poor no better off than they were before the program began; whereas when middle-class professionals are paid out of 'soft" monies the help they provide as teachers, social workers health practitioners can have a lasting impact, and once the funding runs out they have the credentials to access professional positions elsewhere. The challenge was to invent a system that could have both short and long term positive effects. This they did by turning traditional wisdom on its head. Pearl and Riessman operated with two new principles:

1) job first,then education, in place of education first then job; and

2) tailoring the job to meet the characteristics of the worker rather than fitting people to the job.

For such an approach to be truly open ended and no one excluded because of background or social condition, the entry position had to be one that required no prior experience, education or skills.

What began as play became law. That is an important lesson unto itself. Stud-ents can see that the work world is pliable and that calculated change is possible. But that would be an incomplete lesson. Inventing new approaches to careers may constitute no improvement over existing process and no recognized problems may be solved or ameliorated.

In the interest of time and space discussion is restricted to the largest of the New Career programs- the Career Opportunity Program (COP) for teachers. The problems to be solved by COP were equity and quality. Did COP open up opportunities for people who had been excluded from consideration on the grounds that they lacked the capacity to meet accepted standards of performance? And was the "New Careerist" at least as competent as the traditionally prepared teacher? The success of COP would have profound implication for one particularly difficult requirement of democratic education- equal encouragement.

The Career Opportunity Program was a large experiment that had, like all the other New Career programs, a career ladder, a series of negotiable steps culminating in a professional credential. The ladder varied considerably by site but the most were guided by Pearl and Riessman's New Careers for the Poor (1965). - an entry aide (no prerequisites), - - teacher assistant (equivalent of two years of higher education), - teacher associate (equivalent of 4 years in college), teacher (education and other experiences required for credential).

Prospective professionals worked their way up the ladder through a combination of work experience, university courses delivered at the work site and liberal art courses taken at an institution of higher education (Pearl & Riessman, 1965); the education and training varied greatly by site. The programs were of uneven quality, the one fairly consistent element throughout the almost all sites was the lack of flexibility. The curricular and structural changes recommended in New Careers for the Poor were not followed and since this was a critical element of the "dream," evaluation would have to take that into consideration. The COP was designed to: - increase under-represented minority teachers, - demonstrate that inadmissible students can succeed in higher education, - lift impoverished people out of poverty, and - recruit teachers who could better meet the needs of low income children, - improve staffing in schools, and - "respond to the growing belief that the then- present designs of teacher education were inadequate, particularly in preparing teachers for the children of the poor" (Carter, 1977, p. 184).

The evidence supporting the ability of the Career Opportunity Program to bring underrepresented minorities into the teaching profession was very powerful (Carter, 1977). The evidence for achievement of the other goals was also strong. However, it is difficult to establish the extent of progress since the program was short-lived, inconsistent within and between sites and only superficially evaluated. Although participants normally would not have not have been admitted to universities, they did very well in higher education (Carter, 1977; Amram, Flax, Hamermesh, & Marty, 1988 and seemed to better meet the needs of low income students (Carter, 1977)..

The history of New Careers provides yet another good lesson in democratic education because despite its remarkable accomplishments, it was discontinued in the mid 1970s. It rose by a political process and when the political winds shifted, it became a casualty of the political process. In recent years for somewhat the same reasons for its consideration in the 1960s, the New Career concept is again being considered. During the the early 1990s the new Career concept was passed into law in California as the Paraprofessional Teacher Credential Program. It was not funded until 1995 as a small experimental project. In 1992 the concept also emerged in a small pilot program in Melbourne, (Australia) and adopted the central premises of New Careers policy to recruit ethnic teachers into teaching programs. (Knight,1993)

Effective new career programs require:

1) a well developed career ladder at agency or other employment setting with clearly defined tasks for each rung of the ladder,

2) the gap between each rung must be readily negotiable,

3) colleges and universities to tailor their offerings to meet the characteristics and talents of the participants, and

4) tertiary credits to be awarded for skill and knowledge gained on the job (the supervisor on the job serves as adjunct instructor).

While teaching may be suited for a career ladder approach, so too is every other profession. Thoughts need to be given to redefining apprenticeships from being only in the technical sector, to the full range of human services. And while the original emphasis initially was on public service careers, a "new career" strategy can just as readily be applied to private sector.

A discussion of "New Careers" in secondary school and teacher education programs is but one of many ways to stimulate students to dream about restructuring the work world. It provides students with a way to challenge traditional wisdom.

Students should be encouraged to envision career ladders for every one of their occupational interests. A combination of work and disciplined study can be adapted to any form of work and can be organized developmentally into a career ladder, beginning with entry positions requiring no prerequisites, and terminating with a professional credential. Encouraging such thinking puts new meaning into "youth work" which for almost all youth is not perceived as an activity that has any potential for career investment - especially within the new ‘world economy’.

Learning How to Create a Good Work World in school.

There are four considerations in the creation of a good work world: One, deals with the creation of sufficient good jobs to go around.

Second, treats fairness and access. Third, deals with the goods and services that are being created. Fourth, is the impact that job creation has on the environment.

Questions to be addressed:

Can everybody who wants to work find a gratifying job?
Do the created products and services contribute to a quality life?
Do the created jobs come at the expense of the environment?

Students need to become familiar with the logic that informs the practices and policies that are used to generate jobs. Jobs do not fall from heaven like manna in the desert. Nor are they fashioned by some 'invisible hand.' Jobs are created by social policies that include both acts of commission and acts of omission--things that are done or things that could be done, but for a variety of political considerations are not.

There is no consensus on what is the best way to create a high-skill, high-wage, full-employment society. To date no society has sustained anything close to high-skill, high-wage-full-employment. Those generally described as conservative believe that an unregulated market is the best way to move toward such a goal. Those on the far left (a rare voice at the time of this writing) argue that jobs should be established through an economic plan with government playing a significant role. In between there are those who are argue that the maximum number of good jobs are produced through a cooperative arrangement of governmental and private enterprise employment.

Prior to secondary school graduation students need to understand the logic of each position and the evidence used to support the arguments. Students should be encouraged to be become "economists" and engage in forecasting, evaluation of the economy, and assessment of different proposed approaches to remedy problems, e.g., does something like a Federal or Commonwealth reserve bank whose primary mission is to establish interest rates constitute sufficient management of the economy?

To fully understand and evaluate economic policy and strategy students need to be evolved in simulation exercises. They need to design economies and try to determine what would happen with different interventions. The quality of that education is determined by the quality of debate over the knowledge obtained from these exercises. These simulation exercises can be made more sophisticated and more representative as the student advances through the school.

Before students can evaluate an economy they must have a vision of what the economy should look like. That vision should not not be restricted to jobs, but to the the capacity of a society to provide everyone with a quality life. This should start in the primary years where the emphasis is on visions, and variations of the ‘impossible game’ leading to creating models and proposing interventions. In the middle years students should be encouraged to think about the relationship between economics and the environment. Difficult choices will be faced and students will be given the opportunity to understand how economic decisions are moral decisions.

By the time the student is ready to graduate from secondary school his or her ability to engage in economic planning should be highly developed. The student should have been given the opportunity to critically evaluate the logical effects of the range of economic proposals. The student must have been given every opportunity to analyze the employment implications of "economic rationalism" i.e., unrestricted trade in a global economy. Students should be able to calculate the logical consequences of such an policy. They should be able to compare their "theoretical" calculations with actual experience in different areas of the world. Nearing graduation, secondary school students should debate the long and short term impacts on employment of "free trade" agreements NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs). They should demystify the dominant economic slogan that informs much of jargon, if not policy, in education.

Students should be made aware that the global economy is not an inevitability. They may wish to consider regional self sufficiency. A democratic education allows students to dig deep and not be swayed by superficial slogans.

The analysis cannot be limited to just employment. Student need to consider different economic approaches will have on the environment in their respective countries.

We are entering a new age of global markets and automated production The road to a near-workerless economy is within sight. Whether that road leads to a safe haven or a terrible abyss will depend on how well civilization prepares for the post-market era that will follow on the heels of the Third Industrial Revolution. The end of work could spell a death sentence for civilization as we have come to know it. The end of work could also signal the beginning of a great social transformation, a rebirth of the human spirit. The future lies in our hands.

Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work, pp. 291-293

One alternative advanced secondary school students should consider is a world with very little work as depicted by Jeremy Rifkin (1994), and in Australia Bob Gregory (1995) predicts on the basis of longitudional analysis, no work for youth -20, by the year 2005. How likely are their forecasts? Rifkin, as all of the economists that students will examine, should be countered with oppositional arguments. James K Glassman who writes a financial column for the Washington Post in his review of Rifkin comes to an almost opposite conclusion, although he does, like Rifkin, support greater involvement of volunteers as the glue that will hold society together.

The truth is that machines create more jobs and better jobs since they expand the kinds of things people can do. In 1850 most Americans worked on farms, performing drudge labor. Now we produce more food with only 2.7 percent of our work-force, and those erstwhile farmers are software designers, machine-tool operators, TV actors, air traffic controllers and restaurateurs. Of course, the new industrial revolution could turn out to be different from the old one. Rifkin may be right when he writes that in the U.S. "more than 90 million jobs . . . are potentially vulnerable to replacement." The problem is that he presents no solid evidence for this case. James K Glassman, Washington Post National Weekly Feb 13-19, 1994

The highly respected William Julius Wilson is one of the very few that holds to the liberal ideal with his call for "race neutral" government created jobs (1996). In the Australian context, Mathews and Grewal (1997) also make an impassioned plea for the restoration of a full employment economy with government policy offering primary leadership. Students should look for evidence and try to assemble cases for different positions. That is as essential as any other feature of preparation for work.

How unemployment and undesirable work is assigned is a critical component in an education that prepares students to be economic planners. Historically and to this day, those at the bottom of the economic ladder did the unpleasant work and were over represented among the unemployed. Such assignment has been justified on the grounds that persons doing such work were capable of nothing better. The same kind of thinking is applied to the assignment to different educational tracks, hence auguring different economic futures. Any economy that cannot produce sufficient good jobs for everyone has to defend the procedures used in the relegation to the lower rungs of the occupational ladder and to unemployment. Students in their analyses should indicate what will happen to people who cannot find jobs? Or will not find jobs?

As part of this analysis students will examine taxes? They will devise the ideal marginal tax schedule? They will compare a graduated tax scheme with a flat tax. And they will complete the equation by deciding how tax money should be spent? They will define a role for government and calculate the importance of government employment?

It is only when students are prepared to make an informed career choice in the existing work world and participate in the determination of economic policy can it be said that the school has met its knowledge requirement in dealing with work.

The Government school and private enterprise

No matter what schools do, they are not likely to satisfy corporate leadership. The reverse is also true. No matter what corporations do they will not provide that balance of support to insure that all ideas are given opportunity for full and fair development in schools- corporations are not likely to support high taxes, government employment, favorable treatment of unions, or criticism of corporate despoliation of the environment, etc. Nor are corporations likely to provide sufficient good jobs for all future workers. They will not be able to guarantee permanence or equity in employment or promotion.

To the contrary, major corporations are currently downsizing and terminating workers with many years of devoted service, what they will do in the future is totally unpredictable. The failure of business to provide ironclad guarantees is no reason to discourage business-school partnerships. There is much to be gained from such cooperation. It is imperative that schools use business facilities for work experience. School and business will find it to their mutual advantage to work together to generate resources. The smoother the relationship, the more corporations will like the secondary school graduate, and the easier it will be for the student to make the transition into an adult work career.

Cooperation, however, is not capitulation! A democratic school must be independent and not controlled by corporations or any other segment of the society. Criticisms of schools by business should be encouraged and taken seriously. The reverse is also true. It should be constantly kept in mind that corporate executives have no special expertise in education. They are not particularly knowledgeable about curriculum or pedagogy. Corporate treatment of minorities and women has been far from exemplary. Cooperation coupled with independence permits a more balanced treatment of unions, taxation, and government employment than many corporations would permit, and allows criticism of corporate policies and political positions that would not be possible if corporations controlled education or any significant piece of it.

Summary: the democratic school and the work world.

‘To every complex problem there was a simple answer and usually it was wrong’. H.L. Mencken.

For work preparation to break out of the social reproduction trap and meet democratic requirements, it must be interactive and dynamic. Students must be active participants in the development of of relevant knowledge and be stimulated to creative play.

By the time a student graduates from secondary school, he or she has has not only a range of work experiences, a sense of what he or she wants to do, a recognition of what it takes to get there, AND, an informed commitment to participate in the creation of the best possible work- the work world that comes closest to achieving full, fair and gratifying employment and universal quality life without negatively affecting the environment. The class discussions that graduating students have had prepares them to develop an economic plan with sufficient specifics to fix tax rates, establish precisely the division of public and private employment, establish a minimum wage, and define licensing and credentialling practices.

What is proposed is a far cry from what happens in any school. What has been defined as vocational education has tended to be anti-intellectual. The work world has been viewed superficially and as a fixed entity. There has been a tendency to blame the individual for the flaws in the system. Schooling for work has reinforced inequality- i.e., existing racist and sexist practices.

What is proposed is very ambitious. It is also necessary. A democratic approach for work preparation will not happen over night. But it is important to have an ambitious scheme in mind to evaluate progress toward a goal. Such a goal helps redefine teaching. The teacher of the future must be far more involved with the world than teachers historically have been. Education has been conceptualized as an encapsulated process in which teacher and student remove themselves from the real world. That never made much sense. Now it is disastrous. One of the unanticipated negative consequences of a "subject" based education is the excuse it has given teachers to narrowly define themselves, e.g., "I teach English," which has come to mean I do not have to be responsible for anything else. To be of the world and guide a democratic problem solving education does not make excessive demands of teachers. They do not have to be experts on everything. They do need to aware of what is important and help students discover and invent the knowledge that is needed to solve complex problems, among the most complex and difficult of which deals with the future of work and the work of the future.

Teachers, students and parents will find that even with minimum preparation, efforts to approach work as a complex problem will add excitement and a range of gratifications to classroom activities. They will also find that even small progress in demystifying the work world and in the participation in economic policy decisions will be extremely rewarding, leading both to a broadening one's understanding of the world (less feelings of being overwhelmed) and in influencing the direction of the debate.

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This document was added to the Education-line database 06 February 1998