The old idea of a school principal is changing. We used to think of them as teachers who had been around for a time and really wanted to help kids become good people. Now we are starting to think of them as the school CEO.
Things are really different now. The school is not a place where people go to learn; it is like a business. The people in charge are not just worried about teaching kids; they are worried about making money. The school is like a company, and the kids are like a product that needs to be improved so it can be sold. The school CEO is in charge of making sure the school makes money. The school CEO has to think about money all the time. This change in how schools get money is not about that. It is a change in what education is all about. Education is becoming about making money instead of teaching people things. This is a problem because it means that people care more about getting good grades and degrees than they do about actually learning things. The main thing that matters now is profit, not what people learn in school. Education is about education, but now it is more about making a profit from education.
The main problem with our schools is the Credentialism Trap. This is what happens when schools become like businesses. They do not care about helping students learn and think for themselves. Instead, schools are like factories that make certifications. Parents are like customers who pay for these certifications. They want to see grades and test results. So, schools make sure students get grades on tests. This creates a way of learning where students just memorise things and then forget them after the test. The Credentialism Trap is making students do this. The Credentialism Trap is not helping students really learn. The school work we do is like a line that only helps us make a good resume to get into university. This means we are making a group of people who graduate with great portfolios, but they do not know how to think for themselves. The world is an unpredictable place and they need to be able to figure things out. When we only care about getting the degree and not about learning things the people who work are not as smart as they should be. The curriculum and the degree are the things that are affected by this; the curriculum becomes boring and the degree is not worth as much as it used to be. The degree is what we are really after.
This change is making things even worse because of the growth of Coaching Factories and the shadow education system. Regular schools are still well known. A separate system of private tutors and expensive online learning platforms is actually what helps students do well in school. For families with average incomes, the cost of these extra services is now as much as or even more than what they pay for regular school. This makes it really hard for people to move up in society because there are basically two obstacles to overcome: the Coaching Factories and the regular school system, which is what I mean by a double-layered problem. For people who want to get ahead in life, the Coaching Factories are a big part of this double-layered problem. A kid from a low-income family is not just happy to get a scholarship to a good school. The child from a low-income background has to deal with kids who have tutors and coaches who use artificial intelligence and are available all the time. This is like a competition where people who have more money can get ahead. It is making people think that doing well in school is for people who have a lot of money rather than for people who actually work hard and deserve it. This is making the gap between poor kids even bigger, and it is not really fair to say that everyone has an equal chance to succeed, which is what we mean by meritocracy and a child from a low-income background.
The thing that makes this machine work is the change in the way schools are run, which is called the "Managerial Shift". These days, the person in charge of a school is not judged on how smart the teachers are and how happy the students are. Instead, they are judged on things like how well known the school's how many new students it gets and how much money it makes. When the person in charge of a school starts thinking like a business boss, they look at every decision about what to teach in terms of whether it will cost or make money. This means that subjects like philosophy, art or what is right and wrong in society are often not taught much because they are hard to measure or sell. The "Managerial Shift” in school leadership is really what is driving this change. It is affecting what schools teach, like philosophy, the arts or social ethics. These subjects are really important for helping people become well-rounded citizens. The problem is that people think they do not make as much money as other subjects. So, schools focus more on science and math and business classes. They do this because it is easier to convince people to pay for these classes not because they are better for the students. People want to be able to get a job away so schools teach the subjects that will help them do that. They teach a lot of science and math and business because these subjects are seen as useful, for getting a job.
The biggest loser in all of this is the idea of education being something that's good for everyone. When the classroom is run like a business, the school is no longer a place where everyone is treated equally. Instead, it becomes a place that separates people into groups.
The problem with schools being run for profit is that they do not really want to help students who need a lot of help, like students with disabilities or students from poor neighborhoods. These students need help than they can afford to pay for.
When we think of education as something that only rich people can have, then something that is good for our whole country we are hurting our democracy. Education is something that's good for everyone, not just a luxury for people who can afford it. The idea of education being good, for everyone is what makes our country fair and equal. We are moving toward a future where the quality of one's thoughts is strictly dictated by the depth of one's pockets. To solve this crisis, we must look beyond the balance sheets and reclaim the school as a space where the primary "profit" is the liberation of the human mind.
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