EDUCATION -

When I was growing up in Washington Pennsylvania several decades ago the necessary "bench mark" for educational outcomes was much different that what it is today. To the best of my recollection, when blue collar industry was at it's peak, a High School education was often all that was necessary for most of us. School Boards chose curriculum, hired teachers and approved programs with the idea that most should be educated well enough to be competent in basic life skills and competitive for local or regional jobs and vocational choices. College was important to many as well, but the lions-share of my fellow students who pursued post-secondary education enrolled in a local college typically without much in the way of national distinction. This was the way it was in Industrial Western Pennsylvania in the 50's, 60's and 70's.

Today the purpose for which we educate our children is and must be, much, much different. The Blue Collar Industrial Complex for which many worked and made a good living is all but gone. NEVER to return... The global economic matrix mandates this. The American culture has not only become addicted to low cost goods manufactured from other countries, but utterly dependent as well. Our household budgets are predicated on our ability to purchase low cost goods made from far-off lands sold in the myriad of discount stores dotting the landscape of our county. Ironically enough most of the very people who mourn bitterly the loss of our industry in Western Pa, make almost daily pilgrimages to Walmart, Costco and Target etc. Not only do we give those retailers money out of our pocket, but that same money is now destined for international governments. We do in fact give our money away twice.

The ability for the China's and India's to produce quality goods, at a rapid rate and low cost is clearly connected to their exponential leap educationally. THEIR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS have caught up; and have in many cases surpassed our own educational system in the USA. Amazingly many communities, like mine, are still educating our students to compete with those from their own locale, region or even the USA (let's say at most 300 million others)... Conversely countries like India and China are educating their students at a tremendously high level to compete with the almost 7 Billion people on the planet. It has been reported for example that India, has no less than seven universities that rival our Princeton's and Harvard's. And their graduating students are in many cases not only better educated than our students; but they are willing to be compensated for a fraction of what ours would be, doing the same job. This distinction cannot be overstated.

Our pedestrian approach to education is largely responsible for: Jobs being outsourced internationally, while on the other hand international workers are moving in to the USA because corporate America" is really America (becoming globally) incorporated. The employment of Illegal Aliens and paying them low wages is in part our pathetic economic response to compete economically with workers from other nations like India and China. Our fading ability to compete globally with our labor is making us dangerously dependent on other governments that will love us only until we have no more dollars to give and resouces to hand out.

Its imperative to see that we live in a time when it is almost impossible to overspend on education. Our ability to compete economically with the rest of the world is directly connected to our commitment to educating our children to be more than competent in the workforce for decades to come. Education and being economically viable is what will continue to produce jobs, grow our communities and provide for our national security. We can either keep spending money (I.e. Education) on the grain for The Goose-That-Lays-The-Golden-Eggs; or we can foolishly eviscerate ours and extract what we suspect might be left in there. If we kill ours, not only is our Goose cooked, but now we become the grain that feeds theirs.

Thomas Friedman notes in his best selling book, The Earth is Flat the following:

"We know the basic formula for economic success - reform wholesale, followed by reform retail, plus good governance, education, infrastructure, and the ability to glocalize (export good comprehensively).


He goes on to say regarding economic development and renewal need two things:

1. A society's ability and willingness to pull together and sacrifice for the sake of economic development and

2. The presence in a society of leaders with the vision to see what needs to be done in terms of development and the willingness to use power to push for change rather than enrich themselves and preserve the status quo


Economically depressed communities like mine, and short-sighted School Boards like the Ambridge City Schools, appear to be determined to kill the goose. Modern buildings, safe and inspirational learning environments, current technology, up-to-date books and competent teachers are non-negotiable investmets if we are to keep competitive, not only as individuals but as a nation - in a world that has become incredibly aggressive economically. While its true that many of those who live on fixed incomes can be hurt from the revenues necessary to keep all of the above in place... the truth of the matter is that for most its a matter of giving up a Flat Screen T.V., Laptop and/or Vacation for a year or so... Bottom line: We either produce fodder to feed our Goose, or we become the fodder to eat for their Goose. The choice is ours...

POP CULTURE OBSERVATIONS

"Disconnected? " Not AWAYS A Bad Thing...

We've come along way from primal drum beat messaging, puffy smoke signals, skinny telegraph wires and poles, privacy compromised (phone) party lines and environmentally unfriendly Styrofoam cups tied together with kite string... when it comes to communicating with each other. Clearly... how, and how much, we communicate with each other has changed enormously in just the last 20 years.

Just a generation or so ago, leaving High School and going to college usually involved separating ourself from family and friends; and then learning to live in a dorm with only a pay phone at the end of the hallway to stay in touch. Everybody knew what it meant to call "collect." Creative types would call home, let it ring three times, then our parents would call back thereby saving us a dime. Sometimes we had to wait in line during lengthy phone calls. We might even have to find a phone on a different floor, while our roommate broke up with his girlfriend. Regardless, that was usually the sole source of communication and that kind of communication happened ONLY when there was something fairly important to talk about. Almost NEVER were those phones used to call friends from home and/or from other colleges. It was just too awkward and inconvenient.

With some exceptions, most of us were cut-off from our past and thrust into those particular social dynamics that forced us to initiate and build new (life-long) relationships, that in turn, usually led to exponential leaps in personal growth. This stemmed largely from the ability to leave behind unhealthy relationships and drop former unflattering or undesirable ways that we were identified by our peers, accrued while in High School. With that kind of communication isolation we could, in fact, kind of "reinvent" ourself without anyone reminding us that we were stepping out of the line of the established mores of social conformity. And often, when we went home for Christmas break... most of our friends noticed an immediate difference in how we matured - personally, socially, intellectually and even spiritually.

I have to wonder the potential negative affects of ALWAYS being connected to not only our present, but also to those myriad relationships from our past. Today, not only do more students drive to other campuses of their former High School friends, they also do the following: Call daily, or weekly from cell phones (all most all students have one), text hourly or even minutely from them as well. And from their computers? Engage in Instant Messaging, Chatrooms, join online communities like Facebook and Myspace, create their own personal Websites and develop Blogs for online publishing. High School and College life is now a monolithic loosely integrated whole, staggering forward and backwards in microscopic mini-steps. It would seem the ability to observe in one another the exponential leaps has faded...

To be sure there are many relationships acquired in High School - particularly family ones, that are necessary to prize, keep and maintain. I am not suggesting, therefore, that the above forms of technology are bad in and of themselves and that we cut off all relationships experienced while in High School... I just wonder how much dead, stultifying weight, those technologies help to produce in leaving, what needs to be left in the past... in the past - not only memories but perhaps some "relationships" as well. Because in High School, one of the clear social axioms is: Your Past Is Ever Before You and Your Future Lies In Your Past. In other words, your social community there, rarely permits you to break out of whatever definition of "who you are," that has been devised for you.

With all of that explicit technological "connectedness," that students have today, and the implicit accountability that comes from it; I fear that it works as a cumbersome drag - keeping "Who they Were in the Past, To What They Are in the Present" unnecessarily. In a sense, the past is never the past, its always the present. Just something to think about