“Our current education system does not at all consider itself a workforce prep program. Public school is more of a "free day care" model and college is more of a, "wank about and get to know yourself," scam for teenagers.”
That depends on the school. Ours is fully embedded with industry partners that sponsor real-world marine technical science programs. Participation is required. The lack of skilled labor workforce programs is galling. Some sites have tried restoring existing shop infrastructure to reel in the less academically inclined. One notable example was a principal that canned a popular art program to get auto tech/body going, but he flamed out in a scandal of epic proportions. Fake doctorate, discovered by students, and coercive dating behavior with subordinates.
The obsession with “college readiness” is wrong headed. Only about 30% of Americans matriculate at uni. Why railroad all of them into academic prep they neither care about or understand well enough to transfer the skills? Most of my students have a pretty good idea about a meaningful and productive career, and the few that don’t will make good worker bees.
The empathic Eldritch is leaking through the nihilistic veil!
An existential nihilist can still personally invest in a great many things, they just deny that life and the universe have any higher purpose or larger moral meaning. Me personally, I am a quite dedicated patriot.
I help people and try to make our systems better because it is what
I choose to do for my own reasons. I do not subscribe to any greater outside moral obligation, social imperative, or any other reason to do what is right outside of what I believe is right for myself. My moral compass, much as my identity validation, is an island others cannot tread upon.
They empathy you are reading is more an understanding of the human organism. Humans have feels, a byproduct of evolutionary survival strategies that were necessary before human communication developed in a way that made them unnecessary. While this software function can be disruptive, on a macro scale it is quite predictable most of the time. A society interested in efficiency must take those human software warts into their planning when trying to develop the most efficient society.
I think you are presenting a perspective of my suggested higher education model that is far too limited to what is happening here today. I would see a few major changes in work force prep as part of it. I mean, most stupid humanities degrees would be nonsense for rich housewives to get in their spare time, nothing to be taken seriously as real education. As Tax Funded programs, the education would need to be more practically focused. Getting out of public high schools would mean direction to your chosen career education path, but many of it's fruits would probably be more, "Technical/Industry Certifications" than the current BA/BS model.
Our Labor department should be doing a better job of anticipating needed labor and making sure we are feeding our human resources into a system that is producing that labor as it is needed. Why the fuck do we have to rely so much on foreign labor for work requiring advanced degrees? It is aggravating. Why do we have so many useless shits looking for government support when there are huge shortages for both skilled and unskilled labor in our country?
Why do our high school kids not already have a decent idea of what they will do, what part of the country they will live in, and how much money they will make before they even get to their higher education work training? This should be things our transition from basic education to higher labor education should be guiding.
We need better, more efficient systems to guide people as they choose their paths.
