A factory manufactures products for the market. And because it optimizes for efficiency, the factory system is designed to produce similar products en masse.
A tea factory processes large quantities of tea and packages them for the market. One Superloaf bread tastes exactly the same as another. You cannot differentiate one medium sized cowboy underwear from another.
And that is how the education system is designed.
The school factory is designed to manufacture a certain type of human being. All the activities in a school are geared towards one goal; examinations. Attending class, teaching, reading, researching and revising comes down to passing exams.
If you give an exam, you will notice that a majority of the students will write similar responses, even when they don’t copy from each other. They are likely to regurgitate something they heard in class or read somewhere. It’s as if they are clones of each other.
And because human beings are adaptive creatures, the student has mastered the art of figuring out the answers that the teacher wants. Some have figured out ways of passing the examinations without attending class or reading.
If the teacher asks questions that cannot be googled or extracted from some notes, students become frustrated and confused.
The idea of preparing students for the job market implies that the school is a factory that manufatures products for sale. So, like an assembly line, students are taken through processes and quality assurance checks to ensure they are fit for the market.
Compliance, memorization, hiding and doing the bear minimum seem to be the key qualities that students pick from school.
And like blocks of sliced bread, many graduates show up at the supermarket shelves waiting to be picked.
Initiative, idiosyncrasy, creativity and art are absent.
Life is life
Fabio