CTS and the Global Economy

In the past decade provincial education departments have adjusted or twigged their Career and Technologies Studies (CTS) options in the hope that schools would orient students to the new technologies that are transforming daily realities. There is no sense of urgency as western societies are losing their manufacturing industries to China, India and the Third World. Until Obama sounded the alarm with his phrase that we must face up to  our “Sputnik Moment” by facing up taking to the West’s massive loss of its manufacturing base, we merely complained about the low labor costs elsewhere and the friendlier business and environmental regulations in the Third World societies.   Unfortunately, while we lost millions of jobs to overseas economies, our CTS strategies and reforms were cosmetic, superficial and detached from any local economic or job market realities. This failure to to have a comprehensive CTS approach to curriculum delivery, during the massive transfer of companies and manufacturing jobs, continues to cost western societies billions of dollars in lost jobs and opportunities.

As Obama stated in his recent State of the Union address, we are at a “Sputnik Moment”. Essentially, our challenge is to have all our institutions meet develop strategies that create new jobs for the new technologically driven economies with the same vigor and focus as occurred when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into space in the fall of 1957. That threat from the Soviets focused the energy and creativity of every institutional leader to be more creative and to shed those aspects of our curriculums that were redundant or not in tune with the developments occurring in math and sciences. The “spiral curriculum” and a raft of school reforms such as the “new math”, problem-solving strategies, peer group learning and cooperative learning strategies, new commercial ability testing, gifted and special education programs, and more specialized sciences options in high school all grew out of the effort to expand the scientific and engineering base of our endangered western democratic societies. Unfortunately, until Obama sounded the alarm about the need to be more proactive in transforming our approach in meeting the new challenges, we created no national or provincial committees focusing on the specific challenges and implications in reforming our educational institutions. All provinces dealt with adjusting the program of studies to 21^st Century realities but these discussions were detached from the local economic realities. For example in Northern Alberta, our local school administrators and staffs had this or that excuse to introduce career and technology courses and wireless computer and e-learning systems to access specialty courses, even though the school division was dead last in student learner outcomes and high school graduation rates. Even more tragically, local resource industries had to import workers from Canada and abroad to fill local jobs while local FNMI and rural community employment was extremely low due to the lack of even entry level skills

The drift in transforming our Kindergarten to high school Program of Studies must be arrested. The provincial departments of education, political parties, school officials and professional association executives need to form provincial, regional and local Work and Training Committees to overhaul our current piecemeal approaches. Failure to develop a comprehensive approach contributed to massive labour and resource development problems faced by all stakeholders in Northern Alberta and Fort McMurray area. The problem of matching work opportunities to a trained work force will be faced in North Western Saskatchewan unless all provincial educational, business and resources stakeholders plan specific strategies that meet their future needs.

Educational leaders can contribute toward ensuring that we take advantage of the global challenges in developing a workforce that innovates and feel comfortable in working with the new technologies. Perhaps a movement to make Career and Technologies studies a mandatory component of our curriculum from kindergarten up would help Canada meet its Sputnik Moment. We are a land blessed with resources and strong provincial educational systems but if we do not focus in meeting and exceeding the challenges of the new technological realities we shall remain the cutters of wood and not the developers and engineers of the new green technology.

As the beneficiaries of the Canada-UD Trade Arrangement, the greatest trade agreement on earth, the one that exceeds even the China-US trade levels, Canada must create better learner outcomes and talents that increase economic, technological and trade opportunities that are increasingly mutually beneficial to both nations and that meet the challenges of the global economy. We cannot compete with the Third World labour force but we must ensure that our labour force is trained to be the source of innovations, new patents and skill sets in the new technologies in both the resource and new technologies and green manufacturing areas. Without a more comprehensive educational strategy, each province will continue to have huge number of unemployed youth in the North and urban centers while potential employers seek labourers, engineers and innovators overseas.