Another example of how ‘the economy’ is our most lethal hidden infection. On the face of it, the fact we have…

Another example of how ‘the economy’ is our most lethal hidden infection. On the face of it, the fact we have politicians paying attention to employment rather than leaving it to a fictitious market is a good thing. But…there’s a big but here. /1 https://t.co/m0OvfIlhhY

Firstly the game is given away by the fact that they even use the words ‘labour market’. It’s the same economy framing, Once you’re in the framing, everything else you do inside it makes no difference. But education is the most interesting thing here, for me. /2

Lots of talk at the release of this White Paper about making the education system up to the challenge of providing skilled workers for the labour market. This is the point where it pays to zoom out and look at the framing. (It always pays to do that.) /3

The assumption in the framing is that it’s the role of education to supply skilled workers for the market. To provide ‘job-ready graduates’. There will always be a need for that, no doubt. But the emphasis, the framing, gives a lot away. /4

The clear assumption is that the adult world of work and jobs leads social progress, and education needs to respond by providing skilled workers, for that adult world of work and jobs. The problem with this is it’s completely backwards. /5

As ‘the economy’ as a concept was designed to do, it’s just a way to reinforce the current status quo. In REALITY, what drives both social and economic progress (same thing) is education itself. Knowledge. The cutting-edge businesses use cutting-edge knowledge. /6

School isn’t there to ‘prepare you for life’ (of work and jobs). It’s there to seed a new world, of work and jobs. To change the world, through new ideas. It’s education that should be driving what we call the economy, rather than the other way around. /7

It already does. Innovation is education, it’s new ideas. Knowledge. That’s what makes businesses rich. If you harness education only to provide job-ready graduates for an existing world of work, all it does is entrench the status quo. Exactly what the economy folk want. /8

Right now Australia could be becoming fabulously wealthy by developing its immense renewable energy potential, using technology largely developed in Australia. It’s not, because those who profited from 150-year old innovations in fossil fuels don’t want to lose money. /9

What supercharges all societies and therefore economies is knowledge. Education. This is already true, what we call the economy is just a rearguard action to try to restrain and harness that innovation to protect older innovations. That’s what ‘the market’ is, always. /10

Markets just mean unregulated social/economic activity. Which means those with existing power and wealth dominate. It’s not rocket science. /end