Many of the challenging conditions Americans toil under today are a direct reflection of the failings of our educational system. Detroit, the epicenter of the nation’s political-economic crises, provides a prime example of the material, psychological, and social costs of our attachment to the existing system. Our 47% rate of functional illiteracy, our failure to graduate three-quarters of our high school youth, our 10.6% unemployment rate, the fact that almost half of our children are living below poverty level, and the reality that the vast majority of our youth no longer believe in the version of “the American Dream” that our grandparents tied their lives to and our parents only began to realize–all are clear signs of our need to change. All of these problems are rooted in the inability of our nation’s current educational system to envision and practice the full potential of schooling for human development. Nowhere is the deficiency so keenly felt as in Detroit.

Grace Lee Boggs, citing Dewey, has expounded upon how modern education appeals “to the intellectual aspects of our natures, our desire to learn, to accumulate information, and to get control over the symbols of learning; not to our impulses and tendencies to make, to do, to create, to produce, whether in the form of utility or of art.” In an era of unprecedented capabilities to collect and analyze information, we would be best served by an education that questions and addresses how that information can be used in service of human and community development. The uneven attention given to “control over the symbols of learning” in the form of standardized test scores and similar measures will perpetuate a society that can understand the acts of corporate greed, environmental injustice, and violations of human rights, but accept them unquestioningly and pose no alternatives.

A retrenchment is occurring in the larger educational policy world. Performance on high-stakes tests is being used as the measure of teacher quality, with the justification that higher test scores will land students a spot in the shrinking labor market and maintain a steady supply of consumers. The government’s recent intervention in the automotive industry shows how antiquated this mentality is. We are trapped in an archaic conception of education as preparing young people for an ever-expanding pool of jobs - jobs which no longer exist.

In the conclusion to his 1984 autobiography, Coleman Young states, “Jobs built Detroit, and only jobs will rebuild it.” We can’t afford to sit idly, waiting for jobs to return. We need to build a class of innovators who will create the jobs for themselves, for their peers, and for their neighbors. Detroit has nothing left to lose. Our city is facing a $300 million deficit. Our public education system is selling off properties at fire sale prices as a last-ditch effort to cure decades of mismanagement. We top the nation in foreclosures. We are leaving little for the next generation.

What if something other than jobs could rebuild Detroit? What if the fundamental purpose of education was not jobs, but meaningful, purposeful work? What if we took on the challenge to make the fundamental purpose of education an examination of what it means to be a human being? What if the purpose of education was to help children reach their highest human potential? What if we had a conversation about the meaning of service to our community? What if we had more questions than answers

James Boggs