It's coming close to the end of the year now and while it is the time of the year to celebrate in joy and cheer with our loved ones, it is also that time of the year to reflect upon the lessons of the year so we can move on into the year smarter, stronger and wiser.
While we have our own personal reflections to learn from, it is also important to reflect upon the bigger picture too.
I'd like to bring your attention to the recession. 2009 was the year that America and the world began picking up the pieces of the Wall Street collapse.
What should be the greatest lesson that we, as a society, learn from this?
According to Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist in the New York Times, struggling public schools is actually a critical, but unspoken, reason for the recession.
"Now that we are picking up the pieces, we need to understand that it is not only our financial system that needs a reboot and an upgrade, but also our public school system". He then continues to say, "Otherwise the jobless recovery won’t be just a passing phase, but our future."
Here are some of the key points from his article that reported the summer talk by Michelle Rhee, the dynamic chancellor of public schools in Washington.
We need to fix our schools, not just our banks
Lesson #1: Our education system needs to step up to meet global competition
“Our education failure is the largest contributing factor to the decline of the American worker’s global competitiveness, particularly at the middle and bottom ranges,” argued Martin, a former global executive with PepsiCo and Kraft Europe and now an international investor.
“This loss of competitiveness has weakened the American worker’s production of wealth, precisely when technology brought global competition much closer to home. So over a decade, American workers have maintained their standard of living by borrowing and overconsuming vis-à-vis their real income.
When the Great Recession wiped out all the credit and asset bubbles that made that overconsumption possible, it left too many American workers not only deeper in debt than ever, but out of a job and lacking the skills to compete globally.”
Lesson #2: We don't need more education, we need the right education
Those who are waiting for this recession to end so someone can again hand them work could have a long wait. Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive.
Therefore, we not only need a higher percentage of our kids graduating from high school and college — more education — but we need more of them with the right education.
As the Harvard University labor expert Lawrence Katz explains it: “If you think about the labor market today, the top half of the college market, those with the high-end analytical and problem-solving skills who can compete on the world market or game the financial system or deal with new government regulations, have done great.
But the bottom half of the top, those engineers and programmers working on more routine tasks and not actively engaged in developing new ideas or recombining existing technologies or thinking about what new customers want, have done poorly. They’ve been much more exposed to global competitors that make them easily substitutable.”
Lesson #3: Our schools need to hone skills of entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity
Those at the high end of the bottom half — high school grads in construction or manufacturing — have been clobbered by global competition and immigration, added Katz. “But those who have some interpersonal skills — the salesperson who can deal with customers face to face or the home contractor who can help you redesign your kitchen without going to an architect — have done well.”
Just being an average accountant, lawyer, contractor or assembly-line worker is not the ticket it used to be. As Daniel Pink, the author of “A Whole New Mind,” puts it: In a world in which more and more average work can be done by a computer, robot or talented foreigner faster, cheaper “and just as well,” vanilla doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s all about what chocolate sauce, whipped cream and cherry you can put on top.
So our schools have a doubly hard task now — not just improving reading, writing and arithmetic but entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity.
To read the full article, click here.
What lessons do you think should be learned?
What do you think of this? Do you agree? What other lessons do you think our school system should learn from the past year's recovering recession?
Share your eye-opening thoughts with us!
Melissa
Our civilization is composed of many systems that are symbiotic. They rely on each other to exist. One can not be changed without changing all the others, so they will all have to change at the same time. This is not possible because humans learn at different rates and they can not be forced to change. They have to see the benefits for change before they change, but shown the benefits, they will move willingly. Technology provides the means of doing things differently and as we move into the information age we have once again been given the tools to make the transition. We will have to have all the new systems aligned so that a new order can develop and flourish. Several groups have had this in development inthe works for years. One is the Zeitgeistmovement.com To go along with this we have ilearningglobal.biz/LouDeFrog -Yes that is a blatant advertisment for a new way to provide lifelong education. It also introduces many to on line businesses that will provide most goods and services as we move into the future. There will be more millionaires created during 2010 than already exist in the world and they will be living in the new world on the internet. The virtual will become the real because the people who presently control the wealth and rule the real world have no control over individuals who have access to the truth.
All our schools are pretty bad to say the least.
Public schools are the worst.
Teachers are doing more and more disciplining students than teaching. What is taught in 3rd grade today used to be taught in 1st or 2nd grade. Why? They don't want kids to learn how to deal with failure or how to build oneself up confidentally. In China - you do or you don't, there is no choice.
Everyone is trying to be politically correct instead of teaching what our children need today: maths, sciences, botany, biology, chemistry, physics, etc. What about helping them to be able to think on their own, be able to solve problems, be able to use both the right and left brain hemispheres for obtaining answers, for being able to think and plan ahead?
The removal of prayer from all schools is a total disaster. Teaching religion taught them what is right and what is wrong. Today they are comfused.
Muslim imans teach their students that the Koren says it is OK to kill every Catholic, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, etc. because they are infideles. Indonesia has exterminated more than 89% of all the different religious groups. Malaysia has eliminated more than 60% non Muslims, Thailand has an on going battle going on with Muslim (from Arabia, Indonesia and Malaysia) attacking and destroying schools (especially girls' schools), businesses, banks etc.
Our school authorities have their own agenda, that they have no time to improve the quality of education in any of our schools. The only thing they have done is cut out good one program after another until not even the basic is left. Where has that money gone?????? It has been wasted, it has been squandered and no one is willing to accept responsibility. It is money paid into the system for our childrens' future. A lot of it was wasted in Iraq where it was "lost". None of it was ever returned and put back where it should have been.
Who is truely responsible? You are. Everyone is totally responsible for this failure.
Why are so many of our companies moving their companies abroad? Because we no longer have an educated workforce that can do the job.
There are no jobs for our children. What are they going to do with such dismal education?
For that matter, why are so many moms and dads unable to read, write or speak clearly?
Students should never be passed on to the next grade if they can't perform and do their own work.
Many collleges and universities are welcoming students from abroad because they are better educated. Why can't Johnny/Susie read or think or have a good vivid imagination?
Many of the top paying jobs in money and banking are being filled by well educated Europeans - not Americans. Why?
Too many shady CEOs' with no ethics. Everyone of these CEO's should be put in jail for a long time with the other criminals.
What about our gifted children? They are left out. Some are being homeschooled, some are being sent to schools in Europe, but most of the others are lost in dismal schools with no future. Schools can't be bothered by the gifted.
What to do?"
Make the politicians pay by voting all of them out of office and replace them with someone new and make sure they are in office no more than 2 terms.
If you take a look at the ones in office most of them have been in more than 10 years or so. After all they are the ones who have brought on this great depression on you.
You can also do the same for the ones on the school board. They have been in a long time. Time to replace them.
We used to be the richest country in the world but today, we are the poorest. We are the largest begger in the world. We gave our politicians freedom to do anything they wanted to do.
Sorry it's so long
Elizabeth
ps. I could say a lot more.
Hi Elizabeth.
I'm a Christian living in Malaysia, and was schooled in a Methodist Girls school, and I'm wondering where you got your information from when you say this:
Muslim imans teach their students that the Koren says it is OK to kill every Catholic, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, etc. because they are infideles. Indonesia has exterminated more than 89% of all the different religious groups. Malaysia has eliminated more than 60% non Muslims, Thailand has an on going battle going on with Muslim (from Arabia, Indonesia and Malaysia) attacking and destroying schools (especially girls’ schools), businesses, banks etc.
Because in all my 22 years living here (century that my grandparents have been living here), we've never been prosecuted / eliminated for being non-Muslim, or specifically Christian.
I'd really like to know where you got that information from as it's highly sensitive and, I can assure you, totally untrue.
Elizabeth,
I live in Malaysia, along with several other non-Muslims who enjoy the same liberties as you do. In fact both my parents were born in Malaysia and are of Buddhist and Christian descent.
I attended a Christian school too.
Where you obtain your information is beyond me.
And one more thing, any Muslim who teaches to kill Jews, Catholics, Buddhists, etc. is not necessarily an imam. This is not in line with true Islam.
I find your comment inflammatory and unfair as it is not true to fact.