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.

A slight divergence: An "op-ed" on education

What is going on?

I am going to temporarily diverge from my normal blog focus because I can’t get the unbelievably horrific event in Connecticut out of my heart and head.  Like everyone else, I keep wondering, “How did this happen?”  “What could have been done?”  “Where do we go from here?”  I will return to the original focus of personal journeys and 'What Do People Do All Day?' pretty soon as there are some very fun ones on the horizon.

When I start to think about all of the facets of our society that led to this tragedy, I can’t help but return to one place - our priorities, and more specifically, education.

I come from a family of educators.  Both my grandmother and mother were high school English teachers.  After my sister and I were old enough to take care of ourselves after school, my mother became an instructional assistant working with Down Syndrome and autistic children.  I have aunts and uncles who have been teachers and administrators across decades and districts.  Education is highly valued in our family.  

Nelson Mandela 2008
credit: creative commons

In addition to my family’s influence, my studies have led me to also support the idea that education can help solve many of our world’s greatest problems.  Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which can use to change the world.” I agree with Mr. Mandela.  If we are to change our world, we must educate ourselves, and most importantly, we must educate our children.  I’m just a little fearful of what we are teaching our children.  I just learned that by 2014, our education system will replace texts like To Kill A Mockingbird and Catcher In The Rye with instruction manuals.  As Margaret Mead said, “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”  Instruction manuals certainly don’t teach them how to think.  If our society is to innovate, if we are to improve our connectivity not just through wires and technology, we need to foster creativity.  Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk on creativity speaks directly to this:

I also feel that we need to teach empathy and compassion - in both the home and the schools.  It certainly won't come from teaching the California Invasive Plant Council's Invasive Plant Inventory as the new standards suggest.  It was Aristotle who said, "Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all."  It makes me wonder why we fight against some of the wisdom that has already been gained.  Why must we ignore the tried and true and how do we re-introduce this?

I know I'm an idealist AND I also know that there are a whole host of issues plaguing our schools.  I know our education system is so large that it feels that there's no way we can actually change anything. I also know that many people have many ideas of what should be taught in schools.  I wonder, do you think that we can come together to address this in a civil manner?  It seems to me that the common ground we all would want for EVERY child is to have the best possible education - to be able to think critically, to create, to reason, to have an understanding of the world, and to have compassion for others.  Only then, might we be able to best prepare them for the phenomenally difficult and complex problems that they will face (and we are leaving them).  I also believe that if we get our education system sorted, we end up addressing so many other issues in our society.  

There are many ideas that exist about how to "fix" our education system.  There was one that got me thinking, and it comes from Finland, the country whose students rank #1 in the world.  It was while writing a paper with a classmate on how the market principles of competition (charter schools) and freedom of choice (vouchers) affect education, that we stumbled upon two simple and short videos produced by NBC News for Education Nation.  The first was titled Following Finland's Lead on Education.  What is different in this country?  They place a high value on education, and their practices are remarkable.  In the second video, the Finland Phenomenon, a gentleman featured in Robert Compton's film stated, "Politicians, principals, teachers, universities have all understood that this is actually the only resource that we have in Finland that has to be taken good care of:  the brain, the young people, the education."  To me, this is the kind of priority I would love to see us give education.

Everyone is looking for the one idea that will solve our education system.  The simple fact of the matter is that it doesn't exist.  It is going to take a systems approach to addressing the problem, which will require everyone to be at the table and a commitment from all to achieve our desired outcome of putting education at the top of the list.  Would this even be possible especially as we are in the throes of the fiscal cliff and are facing impending cuts?  

Speaking of money and budgets, I'll next look at ways we might be able to finance this, and it comes from a very unlikely source - the ice cream man.  I can't help but think that investing in education (both brain power to get it sorted and money) would positively impact so much in our society.

Thank you so much for letting me diverge a bit from my story-telling of people's journeys and for letting me share a few ideas with you.  I had so many thoughts running through my head that I just needed to express them.  Please let me know what you think as I firmly believe that dialogue is a place for us all to start.

Finally, my heart goes to the families and community of Newtown, CT.  I am sending every bit of love to you all.