Episode 63: Education.edu Part 2

061009.2055



“Road to the 21st Century #1 – Reinvest in Human Capital”

The next few posts will be part of a series called “Road to the 21st Century” where I will outline my ideas on how to get our country back on track, mainly focusing on the long term strategies for building a successful economy that this “bubble and bust” proof. Because manpower is critical to any successful economy, I thought we’d start right at the source, education. Thus this post is a continuation of “Episode 54: Education.edu.” In that post I laid out my educational philosophies, so rather than rehash them, give that one a quick glance over, and fell free to add anymore thoughts to the comments.

Our Competition for the best minds

Let us begin by examining who we are up against for the best minds of the 21st century. In one corner, you have China. China’s success in becoming an emerging power is largely due to two factors: they are communist, so the government solely dictates the direction of the country without pesky things like individual freedoms, and second, they have historically embraced education, considering the military class as the low class. I’m sure the playing field is a bit even for the two groups these days, but China’s embracing scholastic endeavors makes them a step ahead of us on the road to the 21st century.

Our other competition is really the rest of Asia, whom we can lump in one big category. Japan will continue to be the electronics capital, Singapore the communications capital, and Taiwan is posing themselves to be the computer manufacturing capital. Where is America in this equation? Sadly, we are absent. Because we have become a nation of consumers, the spotlight shifts to the companies who are making things. Because we are not consuming these days, we inadvertently leveled the playing field in our favor. I do not consider Europe to be much of a threat right now. They are more our partners than competitors, and though they are leading on technologies in green tech and telecommunications (though Apple is giving them a run for their money), many of their inventions are only viable once they hit the US market. I suspect this is mainly due to Americans really being the best consumers in the world, and their more socialist tendencies make it harder to reward great innovation.

It Begins With the Babies

In order to rebuild the American workforce, we need to start with the babies. Yes, the babies. By which I mean pre-school education. Kids have a super incredible brain for the first 9-12 years of their life. Their neural pathways have not been set yet so they can pretty much learn the basics of anything you throw at them. I have seen 11yr olds who are completely trilingual (English, Spanish, and Chinese). I have seen 9 year olds with a great baseball swing. Any kind of repetitive task they do, they swallow it up until about age 12, when the neural pathways are set. Then, they spend the rest of their life refining their skills palette. In order to rebuild the new workforce, we need to invest in early childhood education. I believe that it should be a requirement for one year of preschool. In this year, they would learn the basics, shapes, colors, the alphabet, etc. That way they can start with grammar and phonics in kindergarten. This would essentially put the students a whole year ahead of our current system. I am in a minority of people who believe this, but we should teach both English and Spanish in preschool, and then a third optional elective in junior high school. Most every child in any other country can speak two languages; I believe we should do the same.
The free market can play a big role here. To alleviate the costs of preschool education, and make a transition to a required program, we can utilize the already numerous preschool institutions that exist rather than building new schools.

Obama’s Outline for Elementary, Secondary, and Higher Education

Once out of preschool, I believe education should largely remain in the public domain. Obama has budgeted $135 Billion for education. He hasn’t fully addressed this issue yet, so let’s talk about what he has said thus far. First let us remember that a lot of this money does go into teacher training. As I have argued, many teachers do not seem to be prepared to educate the new breed of student who is fully immersed in technology. Second, the money is going into increasing teacher salaries, which I believe is very fair, since it is one of the toughest jobs out there (bias placed aside here). Finally, a large portion of the money is going into rebuilding projects to repair and modernize schools with new computers, science labs, and learning centers. The rest of the money should be delegated by the states.

While states should have the say in how to run their school system so it is in line with their budgetary needs, there needs to be a national standard. The lack of a national standard makes it nearly impossible to benchmark states against states, and our country against the world. In music, we have national standards, but they are optional, and are not required in the lesson plans we submit to administration. This is a BIG problem. Without a standard, education is a free for all, and students from different states receive unequal education which defeats the purpose of a public school system. For example, I am a New York certified teacher. Because NY has some of the toughest education standards in the country, my certification is good in most every other state. Florida on the other hand has some of the weakest standards. By implementing national standards, all the students and teachers should be on the same page, ensuring the entire country is well prepared for higher learning.

Obama has stated his belief that all students should attend at least one year of technical school or higher education. While this shouldn’t be required, I also believe that it will become a prerequisite for most every job in the 21st century. I argued in the previous post that ideas are what will be most valuable in the new economy and manufacturing will largely be deferred to Asia. Thus a college degree or technical certificate would give the new workers of the future specialized skills to perform building tasks. I believe that instead of manufacturing goods, the workers of the new economy will be building lots of prototypes. Thus a failed auto industry scenario is impossible because a worker wouldn’t be manufacturing only one thing; any building project that requires special knowledge of photo-voltaic cells would have a worker trained for that task. The demand for specialists means they would earn a higher wage, and that there should be some kind of work awaiting students upon graduation.

Closing Remarks

Preparing our country to compete in the global economy requires investment in the American people. We need to increase the educational standard, and economically incentivize getting an education. It is becoming less and less of a choice as we progress anyway, as jobs that require no education need a high school diploma or GED. Jobs that needed a high school diploma need a bachelors, and so on. With a new teacher workforce, and employing the educational philosophy discussed in Episode 54, and following through with Obama’s vision for education, I have no doubt that the next generation of students will far surpass the output of the rest of the world. We have the brains, the motivation, and the competitive culture to make it work. All that is missing is a foundation commensurate with the 2sy century.

Stay tuned for the final part in the Education.edu series “Free Market vs. Public Education”