The worth of something can be measured by what a person is willing to give to obtain or to provide something of interest. Sometimes, we refer to the cost or value of what we are considering, but at the end of the day the real issue is worth. “What is an education worth?”, I ask.
Value, cost, and worth are different concepts and are understood differently and deferentially. We use the terms interchangeably, but they are not.
Value is a fleeting quality. We do not know the value of a child’s education until years have passed. This was true in pre-pandemic times and it will be even more true in post-pandemic times. The real value of an education is the manner and extent to which the education is used by a graduate in later life. Some values are expressed early on, as in how a college or university or trade school or employer values a high school student’s transcript. Value is expressed in terms of scholarships and financial incentives given to the graduate to matriculate to her next level of life. Value also is given by initial employers who observe that higher achievement in school attaches to higher performance on the job. The value of an education is perceptual.
Values of an education slowly unfold in later life, as in a graduate’s interest in continued learning, unfolding of latent skill sets that support developing mid-life interests, and appreciation for broader, esoteric concepts. A graduate who later in adult life takes piano lessons may draw a line from her piano bench directly back to learning to read music in elementary school. Or, who starts a woodworking or plein air painting hobby or learns a second or third language. Values derived from learning and how to learn are lifelong.
We may value our personal education differently at different times and at different phases in our life. On the last day of summer vacation, our value of the next nine months is different than it will be next June when the school year is over. Value is transitive. Our sense of value is different at midnight when cramming for a final or crazy-stressed with a project due in the morning. Value is sweaty. We wonder in August anticipating a semester of English Literature how these dusty writings will benefit our interest in being a restauranteur or being a potter. Value is speculative. Value is relative to the moment.
Value also is very real. We value the skills and knowledge of our physician or surgeon when we require their care. We value the skills and knowledge of our auto mechanic when our vehicle won’t run. We value the artistry of composers, conductors, and musicians when we attend concerts. We value expertise and artistry, no matter the field, that is the result of personal commitment and learning.
Value is confused with cost.
A quick Google will disclose the monetary cost of one year in the education of a student. Each state publishes the cost per pupil as a state average and by local school district. For the 2020 school year, New York spends the most per pupil ($23,091) and Utah spends the least ($7,179). Individual school districts in a state push these averages to higher and lower extremes. The Wisconsin average is $11,968. Is the education of a child schooled in New York better than the education of a child in Utah based upon cost? Spending on education is more influenced by local politics and culture than the real cost of teaching and learning.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/per-pupil-spending-by-state
Education is expensive, if we consider dollars spent. In Wisconsin, a K-12 education for one child costs the public taxpayers $155,584. Add, another $80 – 100,000 if the student attends a UW school. One-quarter of a million dollars is the cost of an average college degree, Kindergarten to baccalaureate, in Wisconsin. Money is a cold but real estimate of the value of an education and one that taxpayers use and understand.
The worth of an education brings a different twist in our understanding. The worth of an education is comparative and a matter of priorities.
For many and most families, parents constantly consider how much of their weekly paychecks will be committed to educating their children. Parents prioritize the number of dollars paid out for school clothes, books and supplies, school fees, and music lessons against all other family expenses. Will a child have a hot lunch or bagged lunch? The cost includes the price of gas for every car drive from home to school and back, bus tokens, and travels to away games. Education is a real, dollars out-of-the-pocket matter at the family level. It is a constant “what is it worth” computation.
Worth is what a person is willing to pay or give in exchange for an education. Worth includes but is not limited to money. Worth can be what a person is willing to do to earn the money that is paid for an education. Family savings, student savings, working extra jobs or shifts – each is a strategy for creating a sum of money to exchange for an education. Worth is visceral.
Most high school students today consider the amount of student debt they are willing to undertake in order to pay for their education. And, for some, the worry and stress of debt causes closes doors to their education. Worth-debt lasts for years if not decades.
At a personal interpretation of worth, my baccalaureate diploma was paid for by a local meat packing slaughterhouse. The costs of annual tuition, room, and board were paid from weekly paychecks earned in the hog kill, beef offal, and hide cellar. Four years of meat packing paid for a BA. It also provided an education unto itself. There are millions of such stories. The worth of an education is what you are willing to do to obtain it.
Worth is risk. In the pandemic, the worth of an education is expanded well beyond the normal. Teaching and learning have taken on issues of personal risk. To what extent does teaching and learning expose a student or teacher or their families to the virus? What are the health risks of catching the virus? Are these risks worth engaging in continuing teaching and learning? Some teachers on the cusp of retirement retired rather than risk their exposure to the virus. Some teachers resigned. Teachers with underlying health conditions teach from-home. Many families disenrolled their children from public school seeking safer home schooling options. Schools that offer the choice of in-school and at-home learning are finding parents who will keep children at-home long after community vaccination and decline in local positive tests. Worth is a matter of very real personal risk.
In the pandemic, schools have bought heavily into remote learning platforms, like Zoom – a trade name that has become a verb. It is easy for school district to spend $1,000,000 or more on pandemic technology and still be under-teched. Is it worth spending $2,000,000?
Worth is learning new skills and strategies that are necessary to educate and be educated. Standing in front of a classroom is an assumed strategy, but being a face on a screen in a distant home, a face constantly displayed by a camera, seeing no more of your students than their faces on your screens in your home office or classroom – this is a new strategy that must be learned. What is is worth to become a screen personality? What part of being a teacher is traded for this tech persona? Worth brings us back to what we value about teaching and about ourselves.
Worth is demonstrated every morning in classrooms and homes during the pandemic by this simple question – “Will I push the on button?”
Five years hence, we will know much more about the worth, value and cost of a pandemic education. Until that enlightening, we will spend money we don’t have, extend ourselves in unimagined ways, learn new strategies that allow us to teach and learn, make compromises in our worth equations, and hope that the value of an education will surface. Was it all worth it?