Education, the Federal Budget, & Oreos

I will admit, I like the bumper sticker that says:

What I like to read into this is that there is great value in investing in education, and that it would be nice to prioritize our schools a bit more.  It doesn't have to be an either/or situation, as I'll describe in a bit, but if we put education a little higher on the totem pole, we might feel the benefits even more as a society.

I come from a family of educators.  I have seen first-hand how much they dedicate themselves to educating the youth of our country - trying to prepare them for an ever-increasingly complex world.  It's not easy, and as we sadly experienced in Connecticut, it can be deadly.  Teachers are having to spend more and more of their own money (which they typically have very little) to provide even the basic materials for their classrooms - pencils, erasers, crayons, paper, etc.  As more kids require assistance such as free lunch, breakfast, and even dinner, more is being expected of and relied upon from our teachers.  If we actually give education a few more "cookies," we could make a real difference.  I'll explain.

On the very first day of my MBA program, Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry's fame (yes, THE Ben), was one of our guest executives for the weekend.  While I was sorely disappointed that he didn't bring any Phish Food (my favorite Ben & Jerry's flavor), he did bring a few Oreo's and demonstrated what our federal budget looks like using Oreo's: 1 Oreo=$10 Billion.  Given the heated talks happening in Washington about the budget and the fiscal cliff right now, I thought it might be worthwhile to revisit Ben's visualization for a bit of guidance.  The video below is from 2007, so the numbers aren't in today's dollars.  However, the proportions are still very much the same.  It provides an interesting visual of our discretionary budget and what the impact could be just by shifting a few Oreo's.

Ben's Oreo Budget Demonstration
photo credit:  Brooke Van Roekel

A few "cookies can go a long way in helping solve some of our great issues.  Granted, I don't believe in merely throwing money at a problem because that certainly isn't the answer.  If we were just to start with re-building our schools, which many of them are in dire conditions, we could start to make some headway.  Maybe then, our teachers wouldn't be so strapped just trying to provide the basics such as pencils for their students, and they could focus on what they love and should be doing:  educating our children.

Seeing "cookies" being moved from the Pentagon can scare a few people, and I get that.  What was particularly interesting to me was that in May 2012, Condeleeza Rice, our former Secretary of State under Bush, and Joel Klein, the former chancellor of the NYC Public Schools, co-chaired a task force that "looked into the relationship between education reform and America's national security."  Our failure to invest and reform our education system is threatening our "economic future, physical safety, ability to protect cyber assets, awareness of other cultures, and the country's sense of unity" as told in the US News and World Report article.  We need to be offering courses such as foreign language courses and computer programming, but as we become so focused on standardized test scores which do not include those subjects, they are getting cut at exponential rates.  The article also cites a report by the Department of Defense:

The Department of Defense estimates that 75 percent of young Americans are not eligible to serve in the military because they didn't graduate from high school, are obese, or have criminal records.  "Among recent high school graduates who are eligible to apply, 30 percent score too low on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery to be recruited."

As Joel Klein further noted, our fading education system is eroding our national identity.  If our identity goes, we don't have a Plan B.

Thinking about national identity, I think of when I lived in Amsterdam.  I loved Amsterdam.  It is one of the most beautiful and charming cities.  As a visitor, the Dutch are very friendly.  Living there can be another matter.  As an ex-pat, one of the most common phrases I heard was, "that's not possible." I'd be on the phone with the bank and be told, "that's not possible" in response to my question.  All of the ex-pats became extremely familiar with this phrase.  It was then that I realized what one of the most valuable qualities that Americans' possess:  our "can do!" attitude.  That is why I believe that we can address some of these big, hairy, audacious issues.

National security isn't the only reason why a focus on education would do us good.  As I mentioned in my previous post, there is a great economic need for creative thinking.  One of my favorite authors, Daniel Pink, identified this in his book, A Whole New Mind:  Why Right Brainers will Rule the Future.  Oprah loved the book so much, she gave 4500 copies of it to the graduating class at Stanford when she was the commencement speaker.  You can see parts I and II of her interview with Dan Pink on his book here and here.

In the book, he outlined the fact that there are three causes that contribute to the growth and need for right-brain thinkers.  They are:  abundance, Asia, and automation.  Abundance refers to the fact that our left-brain has made us rich and given us everything we could possibly imagine (take the abundance of pet stores and dog sweaters -- really?)  Pink stated, "For businesses, it's no longer enough to create a product that's reasonably priced and adequately functional.  It must also be beautiful, unique, and meaningful."  There will be an increasing demand not just for "stuff" but for stuff that is beautiful and is relevant.  Our left brains know how to produce things.  Our right brains know how to make them pretty and worthwhile.

His reference is exactly what you may suspect when you see Asia on his list of reasons why right-brain thinking will be so critical for us.  Jobs have moved overseas - particularly the outsourcing of a number of jobs that used to be done exclusively in the US.  Just as we saw manufacturing jobs move overseas because of lower wages, we're seeing white-collar programming jobs, for instance, also move overseas; thereby generating a greater need for the creative, right-brain thinking to make us competitive.

Finally, his third reason is automation.  Almost everything is becoming automated, requiring less human skill.  We need to develop ALL of our cognitive skills - our creative and big-picture thinking in addition to logical and linear thinking.

By just investing a few more dollars (or "cookies") in education and ensuring that we're helping our children fully develop all of their cognitive abilities, we will be able to adequately compete, develop innovative ideas to address our global challenges, and quite possibly do some good along the way.  Not bad, I think, and no bake sale needed - for anyone.