Rural Development Initiative Conference on Rural Education.
During the recent Rural Development Initiative conference on rural education at WHCL, Larry Powell, an assistant superintendent for Fresno County Office of Education, offered some thoughts on education in today’s world that I would like to share. Much of the information can be found in Thomas Friedman’s book, “The World Is Flat.” It’s well worth the read. He also quoted Willard Daggett who writes about the perfect storm of globalization of the economy.
Larry startled the crowd, which was made up of city managers and council members, school board members and superintendents and others interested in rural development, by pronouncing, “We’re doing a great job of preparing our kids for the 1900s. If Rip Van Winkle were to wake up today, it is said that the only thing he would recognize is public education!”
“Americans seem to be lulled into a false sense of security and comfort. We assume that it is our birthright to enjoy a middle class lifestyle,” he said.
Here are some of the things he mentioned as threats to that lifestyle:
In China, 60 percent of university students are enrolled in science and math majors—in the U.S., five percent. In 2005, China will graduate 350,000 engineers. By 2010, 90 percent of all the world’s engineers and scientists will come from China.
No Child Left behind “just gets kids to a minimum level. If your kids are at less than 37 percent proficient, the school is considered successful.”
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. tax forms are being processed in India and Reuters news service moved 1,500 jobs in their research division to India.
IBM’s PC division has been purchased by the Chinese.
Delta, United, U.S. Air and Frontier Airlines are being bailed out of bankruptcy by China.
By the year 2100, the average life expectancy will be 107. The average age Americans begin work is 21 and many plan to retire by the time they reach 62. In the future, Americans will spend more time in retirement than they did in work.
Social Security was based on the ideas that there would always be more young people than old. During the baby boom, the birthrate was 4.6. Today it is 2.1—essentially zero population growth. By 2008, there will be three retirees to every one person entering the job market.
On a positive note, Powell said that today’s kids (according to surveys) are respectful, civic minded, collaborative, less likely to drink or smoke and generally good students.
But, he said, they are the largest spenders in history, have grown up in unparalleled affluence and see the middle class as their birthright.
His suggestions to help get us back on the right path:
- We must close the achievement gap between English speakers and English learners in our schools.
- We must get some of our best teachers into our west side schools.
- We must convince parents that a minimum education for students is no longer enough.
- We must convince business and government to invest in our kids.
- We must change the expectation that America will always be number one because we deserve it.
- We must bring back the expectation that studying and learning are critical to a person’s success.
- We must stop diminishing students who don’t go to university.