When corporations reach out with fists full of money and seek partnerships with our public
education system, we should beware of Chaucer’s smile that hides the knife.
Cisco Systems Canada, which had $7.2 billion in revenue last year, has just secured a partnership with the Ottawa-Carleton School Board to train students for two to three years in computer networking. Cisco will train the teachers and provide the computer labs. The students get a certificate and a chance to work in the United States right out of high school.
It will only cost the local, cash-starved boards, who are unable to fund junior kindergarten and french immersion, $15,625 per school.
The computer companies say there is a skills shortage. Instead of using their record profits to train new employees, companies are requesting it be done through the public school system. At the same time, governments at all levels are spending less on education.
Our tax dollars are training high-tech workers and companies inside and outside Canada reap the rewards.
With only a limited amount of time to learn, students are faced with a choice: taking courses which lead to life-long learning skills, or a narrow, but instantly gratifying, training course in computer technology.
A public education system should give students critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Our schools need to teach reading, writing and arithmetic, but they are threatened with becoming training grounds for tomorrow’s high-tech drones.
What is rarely mentioned is that after students spend three years of high school getting a certificate in a very specialized section of the computing world, their knowledge will almost instantly be eclipsed by the new technologies of the day. Schools that once saw savings in partner-ing with a high-tech firm, will need to spend future dollars on new programs, teachers, computers, or software. The program becomes outdated, costing more than it’s worth.
More important than the financial cost is the damage that will be done to our young people and our country. A country’s greatest resource is its educated population.
If our public education system takes on the responsibility of training workers for the high-tech industry, we lose. We lose the time needed to teach literacy and a love of literature. We lose a broad public education which prepares students for all the challenges of life, both at work and within society.
In the end, the only real winners are those companies that have their training needs subsidized by the taxpayer.
—Sally Goldberg and David MacGillivray