Dia de reflexão
Seguindo a sugestão de Vasco Pulido Valente no Público de hoje, é tempo de reflexão. Como não cabe aqui no blogue reflexão política, deixo aqui uma citação que ilustra bem uma parte do problema do ES em Portugal (para reflexão, naturalmente):
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Another reason students and parents choose as they do is that the United States has become the most rigidly credentialized society in the world. A bachelor's degree is required for jobs that by no stretch of imagination need two years of full-time training, let alone four. Why do Americans think this is good, or at least necessary? Because they think so. We've left the realm of reason and entered that of faith and mass conformity. College credentializing has lowered pressure on secondary schools to keep up their standards, already so low that they prompted college credentializing in the first place. A sharply increased number of classes offered in four-year and especially two-year colleges over the past two decades must be categorized "remedial"; they teach what was once mastered in high school—or junior high. If high schools turned out graduates who had ninth-grade math, could read well, wrote correct simple sentences, engaged in problem-solving, and possessed basic computer skills and the ability to work in small groups, then a high-school education would suffice for middle-income jobs. Yet, collectively, high schools can no longer guarantee these minimal skills. So, even if some of their graduates greatly exceed them, they must still obtain the credential of a B.A.
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JEngell & ADangerfield (1998). The Market-Model University. Humanities in the Age of Money. Harvard Magazine, Maio-Junho 1998.