Goals - Foundation Layer

All goals are not created equal. Some are closer to a consensus, and some are closer to a religious war. Some are are perceived as crucial, and some as nice-to-have. Some are close to universal interest, some are strictly personal. This post will try to remain in one corner of the goal-space for education: Educational goals that are as close as possible to the consensus, crucial and universal. Hence, I will say very little about values, since that would kick me away from consensus, as values differ tremendously between my two readers.

What do we want the graduate to be like, for the benefit of the graduate and of society?

Literacy is a safe goal. Every graduate should be able to speak, listen, read and write well - at least in their native language. This is a starting point for many other potential goals of culture, social participation, economic success potential, etc. Ok, we covered mother tongue. What about a second language? Is it important for the 1 billion speakers of Mandarin Chinese to be literate another language? Is it important for native English speakers, who represent about a third of the world's economy, to be literate in another language? It seems that the Chinese have decided that it's to their economic advantage to have access to the current economic powers - who speak English. It may take some more time for English speakers to get used to the idea that the Chinese growing market and world power is a good reason to have some level of literacy in their most common languages, with a similar consideration being relevant to Spanish, Portuguese or Russian as an interesting language for native English speakers. Native speakers of smaller languages, such as Finnish, already take it as self-evident that it is to their advantage to venture outside their own language. A Second Language is close enough to the consensus. Or should be.
A note about the study of any language in this context: The emphasis should be on developing communication skills; grammar should take only a secondary position. The goal is to be able to use the language, and it is of less use to the graduates if they can list the types of verbs.

Numeracy, is another type of literacy, which is a foundation for many directions the graduate may take in life. We can remain within a very basic set of abilities when we define the foundation goal: Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division. In my own work, I occasionally use much higher levels of mathematics, and I may alienate many of my friends writing this paragraph. But the great majority of the people I know, after finishing their studies, never had to find a solution to a quadratic equation, a derivative, an integral, a sine or the like. Neither did they ever need to classify a triangle nor check if two triangles are congruent. They all studied how to do it, but most of them can't do any of the above to save their lives. At the same time, many of them have a hard time balancing their checkbooks, which only requires the ability to add and subtract. How about putting some less time into teaching everybody all the higher aspects of mathematics, at least until we know how to teach everybody how to add and subtract? We can add to the basics also percentage calculations, which are indeed used often by many people (E.g., Sale: 20% off) And also some calculations repeated over time, which will demystify the behavior of the bank balance (add/subtract over time) and the behavior of the mortgage (subtract/multiply over time). I personally enjoy math sometimes, but do we really have to inflict it on everybody who doesn't? Oh dear. I can feel the consensus slipping away. I'll tell you what: The higher levels of mathematics don't need to be abandoned. We can even expand on them if we feel it is necessary. But we can do that in the context of other layer of goals, and keep the foundation layer with the minimum that is necessary for every graduate to lead a modern life.

There are many other worthy issues, and each of them has a good reason not to be part of the Foundation Layer. Some are:

• Science and scientific thinking. That's a good goal, and it is close to the consensus - at least in the west - but it is not as clear as literacy and numeracy. What sciences? Physics? Sociology? How much detail?
  It would take some discussion



• Morality, Humanism, Religion, Ideology, and other values. All these are too far from the consensus to be part of the foundation



• Coping with new realities: Ubiquitous computers and communication, the avalanche of information and pseudo-information, fast changes and lack of certainty, decline of authority, etc. These need further discussion, exactly because they are new and thinking about them is relatively new



• Public speaking, debating, presenting, and other aspects of salesmanship. It would take some effort to find room for these in the narrow confines of the consensus, but it may be worth the effort

So for the most basic foundation layer of Goals, we remain with Literacy, possibly a second language, and basic numeracy. Let's call it a day.