Limitations of Fordist Frameworks of Reference, and their Impact on Education, Enculturation, and the Social Product

The so called 'developed' nations, including Australia, have a problem. This problem exists within a framework of economic growth involving the transition from absolute to relative inequality and its measurement. How important is it that at a certain point in modernization qualitative indicators regarding physiolgical and psychological social health are declining, when paradoxically, the conventional quantitative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita indicators increase? Fordist or Taylorist measurements, such as arbitrary GDP measurements, where the needs of the machine and the profits derived from it are paramount, contradict the needs of the stakeholders and operators within social production. This obscures and misrepresents wealth transfers, national social, ecological and economic realities, and pertinent to the unifying theme of this essay, permeates measurement of educational processes and outcomes within a similar one dimensional framework of reference designed for capitalist economic growth. The system transposes to an incongruence of merely vocational and higher education, and a vulgar functionalist approach to taylorism with its focus concerning arbitrary quantitative measurement within the objective quantitative and qualitative needs of modern society. The question is what to do once material production has reached its relative maturity in the ample production of goods and services in order to improve social health outcomes? It is not enough to just produce wealth. What to do with wealth lies at the heart of the matter. It is proposed that a student focused quality education, engendering deep pastoral care and a humane, egalitarian, heuristic and critical methodology is part of the solution.