The real world of schooling needs vocational education to be drastically expanded
When it comes to matters education, we seem to inhabit parallel worlds – the fantasy world of Mitch Ilbury, and the real one of post-apartheid education. Ilbury’s piece, Education revolution needed for SA youth, published on March 6, simply cannot go unchallenged. The article is replete with business school jargon such "risks obsolescence", "capacity to create work", "SA needs creators, not cogs", "thinkers, not tinkers", "intelligence economy", "strategic intelligence", "agile, adaptive and anticipatory thinkers", "prepared for any kind of world", and so on. This may look splendid in a savvy business-school brochure, but it is out of sorts in the real world of schooling. The only slogan that is conspicuously absent is "we need to think out of the box". Just for a fleeting moment, let’s escape into Illbury’s fantasy world of education. Admittedly, automation, robotics and artificial intelligence are absorbing tasks previously done by humans. But technological advancements have been ...
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