Trickle Down Education

I have never been one of those who keeps careful records, and when it comes to something about which you care a lot, while you may not always recall precise dates, you certainly don't forget that you have feelings about the subject and have voiced them.

Such is the case with the post you see below which I came across the other day when I was trying to clean up folders to create a bit more space.  As I read through it again, I was both encouraged and discouraged at the same time.

Encouraged because the subject of putting some real effort into rejuvenating public education and getting it back on track actually appears like it might be getting our attention.  Pols from both parties are starting to talk about it a fair amount and for sure business leaders are raising their voices too.  Look what Bill Gates is trying to do about it.

I was discouraged because Friedman and others have been banging this drum to make this a national priority for a long, long time, and here we are six years later and not much has happened. 

I know as a country we have more challenges to deal with than as they used to say "Carter's got pills" but I can't think of a single challenge that if we were to make it a top priority would do more to benefit our country than fixing public education.  It touches us all.

A colleague here in the office gave me some plane reading last week as I was on my way to a conference in Chicago. It was a copy of a recent the NY Times magazine that comes with the Sunday paper. Tom Friedman had an article in it called The World is Flat. Pretty powerful stuff. Essentially he laid out the challenge facing our country if we are to remain competitive in a world which (thanks to cyber communication) has removed the barriers to the application of intellectual horsepower.

His point is that if we as a country (and that really means we as a business community) don't really get behind a genuine, consolidated effort to push up the educational standards soon, we are in big, big trouble. As he points out, by the time our students get through the 12th grade, they are last in the educational rankings of all the industrialized countries. Not a happy list to be on to say the least.

When you look at the achievement level of students coming out of the educational system in places like China, South Korea, and India, particularly as it relates to math, the sciences, and engineering, and then superimpose the degree to which they outnumber the U.S. in population, the issue seems pretty clear. Just to give you an idea, in China, he says, there are already more people using cell phones than the population of the U.S.

Bottom line, Friedman's point is that in the not too distant future, if we don't get things fixed in this arena, it isn't just going to say Made in China, etc., it will say "Designed in China."

I think he's right.  [Posted: April 18, 2005]

The Humble Hound

I know there are lots (i.e. millions) around the country who think that the New York Times is so liberal that when you even mention the name Bill O'Reilly breaks out in hives, but that is not what this post is about nor is this about trying to make a case for the Times in general.

It is, however, to suggest that anyone who either doesn't have the time to get their TV news from the News Hour or haven't got the time to read BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes or The Economist either in hard copy, on a Kindle or the new iPad that you stayed up all night to get, you might find reading the Op Ed columns in the Times very wothwhile.

It makes no difference what your political persuasion might be as they have a nice mix of both liberal and conservative viewpoints. More importantly, whether you agree with what folks like Paul Krugman, Tom Friedman, Gail Collins, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich or David Brooks have to say, the writing is usually both provocative, not infrequently eye-opening and often very funny.

Not surprisingly these writers often are commenting on the issues of the day, but from time to time they also have some interesting perspectives on leadership, and it was a piece by David Brooks which he called The Humble Hound that caught my attention over coffee on a recent Sunday morning.

In short Brooks helps the reader to both think about and understand that the sterotypical vision most of us have in our heads of how leaders lead isn't the only game in town.

Living as we do in a time that seems to push everyone toward faster and faster responses, taking the time to think things through is not a bad way to go either.

Point being there is a fair amount of middle ground between intuitive instant knee-jerk reaction and "analysis paralysis."

Said differently, when it comes to leadership we sure don't live in a WYSIWYG world. All one need do is look at the turnover at the leadership levels across the corporate spectrum for all the data you need.

Hot, Flat & Crowded

I am a Tom Friedman groupie which to understate the case, hardly makes me unique.

He has millions of them for lots of good reasons not the least of which is that he speaks in terms that most of us can understand, relate to, and most importantly are thoughtful. So whether you happen to agree with his point of view or not, it's hard to say that he doesn't make for logical arguments. At the very least he makes you think.

I am sure that many of us have read scores of his columns and many more his books. What I am not so sure of other than catching him from time to time on Meet the Press, The News Hour on PBS or maybe short segments on TODAY or GMA is how many have had the chance to hear him at a speaking engagement.

If you are like me and have not had that opportunity, here is the link to a talk that he gave on his newest book Hot, Flat, and Crowded which he gave at an organization called Sixth&I in Washington.

If you are a Friedman fan, you might want to check it out, and even if you are not a fan, you still might want to check it out.

Hard Roads Ahead

Like many of you, some of what I read on the Op Ed pages of the NY Times I buy into and some I don't, but rarely do I find the columns uninteresting.

Indeed, whether I agree with what I am reading or not, the columns of people like Tom Friedman, Maureen Dowd, William Kristol, David Brooks and Bob Herbert all continually drive home to me the value of education.

The ability of these writers, not to mention thousands of others whose have been fortunate enough to gain an excellent education have been blessed with being able to refine the gift of communication in writing, and not just the ability to "communicate", but to do so in ways that are both very powerful and often equally as persuasive.

A recent piece by Herbert which he called Hard Roads Ahead really caught my attention because he was writing about a subject on which I have commented here on a number of occasions, and probably will again as I believe it is the most serious issue we face, and heaven only knows we don't lack for issues competing for the top spot, but my vote still goes to the state of public education.

In the article, Mr. Herbert quotes from a book by Robert Wise. The book is called "Raising the Grade: How High School Reform Can Save Our Youth and Our Nation." Wise said:

International comparisons rank the United States a stunningly unimpressive eighteenth for high school graduation rate, a lackluster ranking of fifteenth for high school reading assessments among 15-year olds in developed countries, and an embarrassing 25th for high school math.

The column goes on to point out, again using Wise as the source, that in 1995 the U.S. was second in the world (New Zealand was first) in the graduation rate from four year colleges, and even though as a country, we have increased our percentages, we now rank 15th because of how rapidly others in the world have progressed.

The results? One example pointed to was the fact that the CEO of AT&T, Randall Stephenson, has said that the company has had real problems trying to find enough skilled workers to handle 5,000 customer-service jobs that the company had promised to bring back from overseas.

In a prior life I spent five years working for a city as the Director of Labor Relations. At the time I was too young to realize what the heck I had gotten myself into, but it turned out to be a memorable experience and education on several levels to say the least.

When I left the public sector and returned to the corporate world, I took away two key "learnings." One was the importance of leadership, and the second was a belief that when it came to really solving many fundamental issues facing us all, that it would have to be business not government that would have to lead the way.

Given the track record of both of late, it doesn't feel like much of a choice, but to borrow once again from the column, I thought the last quote from Wise said it very powerfully indeed:

"The best economic stimulus package is a diploma."