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Concurrent Education - The Basis of The Jefferson Project
The skill of exercising good judgment is the cornerstone of a world class, high tech electronic product design and manufacturing workforce.
However, good judgment is the product of a real-world process, attained only by working in a real-world environment. It is much more than a numerical answer found in the back of a textbook.
Recognizing the need to serve rapidly changing industries by concurrently educating students (i.e., using a real-world, state-of-the-art business as the classroom for the full tenure of a student's post-secondary education), was inspired by Mr. Jefferson's concept of an "academical village." Departing from the traditional vertical teaching model, he suggested the need to create a self-contained learning community, which led him to design and build the University of Virginia.
In a similar way, the Jefferson Project will break the dysfunctional educational paradigm that currently supplies workers to the high-technology product design and manufacturing industry. This paradigm educates in an academic community, and then sends the "educated" to a working community, whose real-world industrial needs continually outpace the education the students have received. This traditional approach has led to an ever-growing divergence between academic preparation and industry need.
The ability to select the best path to resolving a problem -- an extension of "reaching for the smooth handle," as Mr. Jefferson would say -- is an essential skill a student should develop for technical problem solving and interpersonal conflict resolution. The only school capable of developing this skill is one with a real-world classroom.
Mr. Jefferson proposed a public education system of "distinct grades of education," with students who demonstrate a superior ability advancing to higher grades. The Jefferson Project's Associate Student program will reach into middle and high schools to nurture and encourage students who have a demonstrated aptitude and interest in the electronic manufacturing sciences. This program will provide a long-term path resulting in the formation of a sound educational platform on which the needed success skills will be developed at the Institute (the equivalent of the medical profession's teaching hospital). Underwriting this program will be leaders of industry eager to tap into this future, ready-made workforce of employees who can hit the ground running with the required, relevant skills.
In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Mr. Jefferson said, "...by apprising (the students) of the (history) of the past (it) will enable them to judge the future; it will avail them of the experiences of other times and other nations; qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men..." Our real-world "history" will be provided by experienced professionals from industry who will have the dual role of teaching the students in the Institute's classrooms and leading the students in the project teams of the Manufacturing Center.
In his Report on (the) University of Virginia of August 4, 1818, Mr. Jefferson said, "As well might it be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable both in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth."
"Grafting" to the "savage stock" through the Associate Student program, the professional life experiences of our faculty and the real-world experiences in the co-located Manufacturing Center surely will produce "sweet fruit."
Thus, the practical manifestation of Concurrent Education, an extension of Mr. Jefferson's "academical village," will literally wrap a school (The Jefferson Institute of Technology, or JIT) around a for-profit contract electronic product design and manufacturing business (The Jefferson Electronic Manufacturing Center, or JEM Center). The real-world, then, becomes an integral part of the student's education. This, in turn, will fulfill the Project's mission of building and maintaning a world-class workforce for the domestic electronics industry.
Concurrent Education - The Basis of The Jefferson Project
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