The manifesto/polemic:

"The best educated nations win."
Or: "The best educated and most entrepreneurial nations win."

There is more to life than education.
There is more to life than entrepreneurship.

Yet these two variables are increasingly important in the years ahead—and those years are rushing toward us at an unprecedented pace. In technology change, yesterday's decade is today's two years—or less.

If these two variables are important, then it more or less follows that our teaching corps—especially for the first 8 grades—are the most important members of our society. (Singapore more or less—mainly more—believes this and acts upon it.)

Implication: The very best and the very brightest and the most energetic and enthusiastic and entrepreneurial and tech-savvy of our university graduates must—must, not should—be lured into teaching. (They need not stay for life—one would be happy with 5 years, ecstatic with 10.)

In the USA and other nations (many, if not most, if not almost all), the variables set out above and associated with excellence in teaching required to meet the challenges of 2020, let alone 2040, alas, do not describe our fresh caught teachers. One could even argue, stopping short of cynicism, that those variables are often the antithesis of the ones associated with those attracted to teaching today. This is simply unacceptable in the face of the most likely scenarios for economic excellence—or, for that matter, survival.

(FYI: To reiterate one of the initial points—we must attract instinctively entrepreneurial candidates—there are more of such candidates than one might imagine. Attracting entrepreneurial candidates, of course, requires a system that is open to change and which celebrates rather than condemns rebels. Concerning the proclivity or fitness for entrepreneurial adventures, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus put it this way: "All human beings are entrepreneurs. When we were in the caves we were all self-employed ... finding our food, feeding ourselves. That's where human history began. ... As civilization came we suppressed it. We became labor because they stamped us, 'You are labor.' We forgot that we are entrepreneurs." Bottom line: Super-genes are not required to foretell entrepreneurial talent—the millions upon millions converting to entrepreneurial ventures courtesy the Web are more or less proof of Yunus' assertion.)

Finding and educating these new-criteria teachers requires a revolution in both content and the incentive structure needed to attract the best of the best—and to induce them to experiment boldly once aboard the education train.

(FYI: Re content, there is a school of thought prevalent in the USA which demands an immediate curricular shift toward "STEM"—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. To be sure, no harm done, lots to applaud. However, Rhode Island School of Design President John Maeda recommends instead "STEAM"—science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics. His argument is based upon an assessment of future bases of competitive advantage as computers make vast inroads to existing jobs; the concept arguably—or, in my opinion, inarguably—makes a great deal of sense.)

This necessary revolution in teacher inducement and development, no matter the urgency assigned, will not happen overnight—or in the next five years, even if one and all, including teachers' unions, agreed on the premises above.

In the meantime, we cannot wait ...

Our universities today do turn out magnificent "products" who can meet the specs above and de facto launch the education revolution—today. We must immediately move to unmistakably and with governmental approval and towering private sector contributions bag these candidates as they march out of the graduation auditorium with their spanking new degrees.

(FYI: In my opinion, the impact of the new technologies is such that we need a very young teacher corps—one that has the demographics of the Facebook or Twitter new-hire corps. Assertion: With rare exceptions, older teachers—35+??—will have the devil's own time identifying with the experiences of the students who walk into their classrooms, circa 2020—and, for that matter, circa 2013. And the devil's own time embracing new "upside down" approaches to teaching. For example, as many forward thinkers have said, the teacher must in effect partner with, rather than dictate to, students who in many ways are more technically qualified than they are; and partner with students in ventures that de facto foreshadow a penchant for entrepreneurship.)

Role models needed: Teach For America is an example of an approach that appears to provide a semblance of a road map for others. It is hardly "the answer" to this "save the nation" need. But it does provide an exceptionally worthwhile and tested case—both its successes and failures, the latter of which illustrate the pushback that this entrepreneurial approach induces in, at least, the USA. Teach For America, however, is almost proof positive that, under the right circumstances, the very best and the very brightest from leading institutions can be attracted in numbers to, at least, a stint as educators; this proven attraction predates the 2007++ crash, so it cannot be written off as merely a response to a lousy job market for graduates. (Teach For America is but one example. In particular, courtesy charter schools among other efforts, a plethora of de facto experiments are in train in the USA.)

Also, in the role model set, could be the likes of the Robertson Scholars—a "full ride" university scholarship program established by philanthropist Julian Roberts and overseen by an evaluation process so rigorous that it merits comparison to the Rhodes program, though at the university entrance juncture. In one way or another, identifying these future "save the nation" teachers is a bit like developing sports champions; while one can go far too far, ID-ing talent early is an imperative strategy. Which is to say that the attraction to, in effect, nation-building-through-a-matchless-teaching-corps should mark university entrance as well as post-university work. (FYI: This latter assertion about funneling top university candidates into the system in no way suggests funneling them toward schools of education—alas, the latter are often laggards rather than leaders in developing the needed skills laid out at the beginning of this paper.)

This open sharing of intellectual property has moved up to a completely different level with the advent of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Pioneered in 2007 by David Wiley of Utah State University, MOOCs reached a turning point in 2011 when a course on artificial intelligence enrolled a staggering 160,000 participants!

Continued reading The Future Shape of Education?...

Posted by Madeleine McGrath |

This is obviously not the ideal way to cultivate a talented workforce. The education system in the United States still seems to be attempting to churn out well-behaved factory workers. With the enormous pressure placed on teachers to produce sufficient test results, the classroom becomes more about test preparation than exploration and discovery. Albert Einstein, long since deceased, had this to say:

"It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry."

We recently heard from Matt Lintner, a teacher in Fairfax County, Virginia. He sent Tom his reflections on what children are learning, and not learning, in school in a piece he titled "Race to Nowhere." Tom asked Matt if we could share his thoughts with you, and Matt kindly agreed. We urge you to take a moment, read what Matt has to say, and think about what you can do to help our youth learn what truly matters. Please, fan the flames of their curiosity.

Race to Nowhere

Management guru Peter Drucker famously said, "What gets measured gets managed." But what if we're measuring the wrong things? Consider the following: you can graduate from high school with straight A's without ever having:

1. Searched for answers to unknown questions.
2. Budgeted your own time.
3. Discovered what most interests you.
4. Initiated a project requiring sustained commitment.
5. Taken risks or experienced failure.
6. Led a team in the pursuit of a worthy goal.
7. Practiced consensus building or the messiness of compromise.
8. Asserted yourself, even if it meant challenging authority.
9. Built something of value.
10. Created art that speaks to the soul.
11. Explored the natural world.
12. Interacted with people outside your age group.
13. Volunteered substantively in your community.
14. Apprenticed in fields of your choosing.
15. Started a business.
16. Traveled and gathered perspectives outside your comfort zone.
17. Acquired practical skills like saving and investing, handling tools, programming, growing food...

Perhaps most tellingly, you never learned to say "No."

America can continue down the path of national standards, high stakes testing, longer school days, expanded calendar, merit pay, and all the rest—but none of it will cure what ills us if we're not focused on what truly matters.

Matt Lintner

Teacher

Fairfax County, VA

The Sunday New York Times had a special section called "Education Life." One article, "Career U.," describes some of the changes we might expect in university education. For example, the president of the University of Michigan was surprised (to put it mildly) when she learned five years ago that 10% of incoming freshmen, some 600, had started their own businesses while in high school. She and her colleagues responded by creating about 100 entrepreneurship courses. The article tickles our imagination by describing a few of the more inventive new master's programs:

1. Learning to listen. (Narrative medicine.)
2. Homeland security.
3. Cybersecurity.
4. Urban environment. (Sustainability.)
5. Sustainable cultures. (Beyond environmental sustainability.)
6. Education leadership.
7. Cars of the Future.
8. Construction management. (Hmmm, I got one of those from Cornell in 1966, with the diploma coming by mail to Hue, South Vietnam, where I was doing, yes, construction management for the U.S. Navy. What goes around comes around, I guess.)
9. Specialized MBAs. (E.g., market research, energy, pharmaceutical management, wine and spirits at ESSEC B-school near Paris.)
10. New media.

All in all, a worthwhile read.

[Above, snow, 3 January 2010—about a 2-foot accumulation.]

The Financial Times reported yesterday that Harvard b-school students created, and over 1,000 have signed, an oath specifying acceptable behavior. Among other things, they promise to pay equal attention to "shareholders, co-workers, customers and the society in which they operate." On the one hand, as writer Michael Skapinker says, it's easy to dismiss; the oath hardly represents "breakthrough thinking"—except perhaps in prestigious b-schools and on Wall Street. On the other hand, it is perhaps a small step in a useful direction, and deserves a tiny nod or at least temporarily suspended laughter. Some of this seems to follow not only the financial crisis, but the famous/infamous recent Jack Welch disclaimer. Welch, father-patron saint-cheerleader-haranguer-in-chief of the ubiquitous "shareholder value movement," recently dissed the primacy of shareholder value as "the dumbest idea in the world." Presumably dismissing as scurrilous the primary thing you stood for in your widely heralded career does not tarnish your reputation (Welch was just reported as starting an online B-school); to me, it makes the former GE icon a self-anointed laughingstock.

Speaking of laughingstock: My b-school alma mater, Stanford, has just appointed a new dean, Garth Saloner. I am sure he is a fine fellow, doubtless very bright—and of course I wish him well. But Stanford surely wins no out-of-the-box honors; in fact they seem to have defined "trapped in the same frigging box we've been in approximately forever." The new dean is a white-male-economist. Dear God-oh-God-oh-God-oh-God, why why why why why why another economist? Solaner, the latest poster child for non-diversity, makes the third or fourth economist in a row—I've lost track. (Before the economist streak started, we had an accountant who starred in the Enron fiasco.) The lack of imagination is nothing short of mind-boggling. I only wish I'd been giving my b-school a lot of money, so that I'd have the unalloyed pleasure of cutting them off.

Speaking of the Stanford b-school redux: I recently mentioned an excellent Harvard Business Review article, "The Buck Starts (and Stops) at Business School," in which author and former b-school dean Joel Podolny says at one point, "The degree of contrition at business schools seems small compared with the magnitude of the offense." In the issue of Stanford Business I just received, the outgoing dean, Robert Joss, offers his own assessment of b-school contrition: "A better balance is needed."

Please pass the barf bag!

What kind of inspiration does this spark for you? Does it make you want to create your own "idea videos" for something you're passionate about? Does it make you want to find the same type of videos done by preschool teachers in, say, Russia for your children to watch? Let us know.

(NB: The author admits his answer is not for the ages. The growing potency of technology means that even the college sheepskin holders will be under attack fairly soon. But for now that sheepskin matters ... a lot.)

When you get back from gagging in the bathroom, or if you survive shooting yourself, dive into a Bloomberg companion piece, "How Test Companies Fail Your Kids: The $2.8 billion industry hires $10-an-hour graders for exams that control U.S. schools." I'm far too old to lightly use a word like "unbelievable." But this stuff is ... unbelievable. Try "layed off" janitors who majored in "Phylosophy/Humanity" grading essays that determine our kids' life success and our teachers' employment prospects. This article would be hilarious were it not of such surpassing importance. Again, I underscore that this comes from Bloomberg, not the PR arm of our national teachers union.

That's a big deal given that "intellectual capital" intensity is supposed to keep us afloat for the next few years/decades/"forever."

Talk about a positive spin for the tech revolution! Congrats to the creators of In-Cab University, the "freshman" drivers—and the companies that are ponying up.

"Today's business schools have strayed from that original mission of stewardship, according to [Harvard Business School's] Rakesh Khurana ... While trumpeting their production of leaders, they have failed to define leadership in the context of the public good and enshrined as their highest ideal the maximizing of shareholder value, he contended ... Misdeeds at companies like Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco can be traced in part to a 'de-professionalization' of managers who put the pursuit of profits over their commitment to the broader society."

And the expected response from U of Chicago's Steven Kaplan: "He's confused. It's hard to understand why he's saying there's a problem or a failure. By and large, the goal of maximizing shareholder value does the right thing for companies. And in the long run, it's good for the economies in which companies operate."

Is Khurana confused? Is there no problem? And is the commitment of business leadership to the public good less important than shareholder rights?

Brains & brawn. A non-starter? Think again. (FYI: Hats off to Williams for its 8th straight Div III Director's Cup victory.)

I don't care. I think it's important.

A local school had a fabulous increase in standardized math test scores. Very cool. In the local paper, the Principal said, "The significant jump is due to the hard work and dedication of our teachers and administrators—and is not the typical increase one would expect in a year."

Quiz: What's wrong with that quote?
Okay, it's a rhetorical question. I'll provide my "slightly" altered version: "The significant jump is due to the hard work and dedication of our students and teachers and administrators—and is not the typical increase one would expect in a year."

Am I a nitpicker? Or not? Your call.

(PS: Flu struck—hence my small contributions of late. Ha! Haven't missed a speech. Off at noon for Key Biscayne for Merrill Lynch.)

The latest. Remember, a couple of days ago, my "Sales90"? Now, it's "Sales111." It got me thinking: Why don't B.Schools (or, at least the so-called "elite") teach ... SALES ... anymore? We've got marketing up the gazoo—and marketing is indeed important—but by and large no bloody sales. Obviously sales are important. (Duh.) And we do "know some stuff."

'Nuff said.

(Whoops: and, remember, no Innovation to speak of, no Creativity, no Implementation (à la Bossidy's book/Execution), no Presenting & Listening/Interviewing ... the two most important practical Tools. 'Nuff said redux.)

So: Please explain the above. Anything Goes: "Sales is a given." "Sales can't be taught." "There's not one bloomin' prof who'd know his left foot from his right on the topic." Etc.

Shame that these young entrepreneurs will all too often be growing up in an education system that models the opposite: order, regulation, standardised curricula, hierarchy, etc., and then pass on to work where their bosses will talk a good game on innovation and entrepreneurship, but run regimes where "Compliance rules, OK!"

The big question is what is it going to take to disrupt this pattern and give our budding entrepreneurs a real chance to blossom? Much more than today's "creativity summit" in London, where Mr Brown and 200 specially invited business leaders will discuss how creativity and innovation can boost British business. Better they spend their time together talking about how they systematically suppress any sign of entrepreneurship! I wish.

Wow!

None the less ... I HAD A BOFFO TIME IN THE KINGDOM! Post 9/11, Americans have avoided the country like the plague, and thence a visitor was looked upon as an Excellent Aberration. Fact is, I met an extraordinary group of public & private & university execs yesterday who were exceptionally personable and who aim for nothing more than the improvement of their country and the lot of their fellow citizens. I considered myself an ambassador as much as a "speaker," and feel that I made several true friends, a couple of whom I invited to my Vermont farm.

To survive, we must learn (or re-learn) to be friends, while reserving the right to chide that of which we disapprove—e.g., the absence of women's rights (Saudi has allowed women to do the full bit in schooling, and apparently there are now more women than men with PhDs ... but the women still cannot work). I must also add that while I unflinchingly support our energetic efforts to deal with the War on Terror, I was appalled to hear the stories of our officials' harassment of senior Saudis on obviously innocent missions to the U.S. (I haven't confirmed this—Newsweek take note—but one Veeeery Senior Saudi Exec refused to visit the U.S. because he wanted to bring his wife, but on her Visa application she apparently had to certify that she was not a prostitute. If true ... )

The "back from" means, alas, not Spring-y Vermont but arrival into my "second home country" ... England. I'm taking R & R today and being cosseted by my Great Pals at the Four Seasons London as I prepare for my assault on Warsaw tomorrow.

NB: And re the above, as long as California Governator Arnie keeps driving his Hummer, we're gonna need the Saudis as pals! Q.E.D.