Tourism

I like to think of myself as an academic traditionalist. Others might think of me as a fuddy-duddy, a stick-in-the-mud, or maybe just an old fart.

We can measure the worthiness of a subject by how long it has been around. Language and Literature are very old. Herodotus was writing History 2500 years ago, and Thales was studying worthy subjects like Mathematics and Science before him, not to mention the Indians and Chinese.

But Food Tech? Hotel Management?? Business Studies??? Sure, industries and corporations need to study their profit margins, but do we really need to teach them in high school?

I suspect that Business Studies is an American invention, an evil pact between corporations and big universities to further corporatize the education system. As Alfie Kohn puts it, we are not producing learners, but workaholics—exactly what the corporations want! Now Business Studies is the most popular elective at our school.

Today the Year 11s came. One of them was gingerly holding his English project: a Snakes & Ladders Concept Map that relates the characters of a novel.

“Let me guess, we’re studying Literature?” I asked.

“No, English.” he responded.

These poor kids don’t even have simple academic skills, such as key vocabulary or the three R’s: reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic. They can’t read maps and they are missing basic concepts about time and space. If you asked them, “which came first, the 17th Century or 18th Century?” you would get answers like:

“Huh?”
“Ummm, I dunno.”
“Who cares?” Or:
“About the same time.”

The clever kids would say, “AD or BC?” and the really clever kids would say “CE or BCE?” but you would not find a single common sense answer like: “The 17th Century came before the 18th Century.”

I released the Year 11s. “Where do you go now?” I asked hopefully, “Science?”

“No,” they told me gleefully, “Humanities!”

“And what are we studying in Humanities, the Arab-Israeli conflict?”

“No! Tourism!”