As contrary as that old educational theory sounds, it wasn’t uncommon for early Americans to come to the US with trade skills rather than academic credentials. Many children in early immigrant enclaves failed to finish school because they were expected to work on farms, factories and to run businesses to keep their families fed and clothed. Yet these same unoriginal Americans built us into a great nation. They may not have been particularly creative but they made up for what they lacked in academic chops in a hard work ethic.

Similarly, China and India are becoming great nations because they are industrializing, and that alone creates jobs. Societies on the Industrial upswing don’t need to produce Einsteins; they only need to be PRODUCTIVE. Productiveness in any capacity grows an economy and raises standards of living in the long run. We here in the US outsourced our real economy, however, and now we have the likes of Friedman crying crocodile tears about the plight of education — an alarmist argument that just so happens to be decades old, perhaps even as old as America itself!

Ironically, that perfectly entrepreneurial education at Ivy League schools is what persuaded the financiers on Wall Street to produce their glorified financial “innovations” by which to sell Main Street up the river! They pumped and dumped an entire economy, pocketed the fire sale profits, and yet Friedman argues that we lack for smart and innovative people? The bailout recipients ARE the innovators and it’s plain as day that their “innovating” had nothing whatsoever to do with ethics, morality or patriotism toward one’s country and fellow American. If ethics had been part of the creative equation it would be a win-win game instead of a zero-sum quackery of a free market.

Bearing the above in mind, there are two bottom lines that matter even more than success-oriented personality traits and/or whether or not we have the “correct” form of education:

1. Campaign Finance: Politicians who are tempted by lobbying, consulting, share holder and board member offers are often “bought” through the campaign donation process wherein large well-funded groups are deemed individuals with First Amendment Rights under the law. When large aggregates are permitted to speak as one whereas the voters are largely unrepresented, to whom does a career politician owe his or her re-election — or more telling, his or her job after leaving office?

Remember: Deregulation of the energy market preceded the collapse of WorldCom and Enron, and the incremental deregulation of the financial markets during Republican and Democratic administrations alike revived conflicts of interest within our banking system that our battered and bruised legislatures during the Great Depression worked to prevent so that such times would not befall upon us again (or at least not for the same set of corrupt reasons). If education has failed, it is in the sense that we voters are too lazy or too overworked or too trusting to check up on the people we vote into office and whether or not they are serving OUR bottom lines.

2. Familial breakdown: Teachers can’t work miracles out of children who live in fragmented, exhausted, overworked homes. American parents are working two and three jobs or the equivalent in hours-per-week. The average American now works 15-25 hours more per week than workers did in the 1960s, and we take far less vacation time than most of Europe and even Japan! Yet we’re supposed to sit here and engage in the sport of bashing ourselves because, well, we are LAZY? That’s the LAST thing we Americans are. Enough with self loathing!

Reality: When there’s no adult at home to help with the homework, to see that a child eats at least ONE nutritious meal instead of all the crappy stuff that is creating the diabetes, cancer and obesity epidemics; and when there is no “values” or respect for adults outside of that parental authority figure, what do we expect them to do in school? Morph into more than the sum of their painfully limited parts? Children need to have more than entertainment to keep them out of their exhausted parents’ hair: Their FIRST exposure to the aspects of living in society ought to come from their extended family, including culture, arts, and even that thing that is so politically correct to forget: faith tradition. Instead we have spiteful attitudes toward the value of a “moral code of conduct” as might be learned through church, and we have adults going around parroting such disrespect such as “Those who can’t do teach”. Again, what do we expect of children who are absorbing what the un-conscientious adults in their life seem to value (or rather NOT value)? As many recall, growing up in the 1950s-’70s offered one form of electric babysitting: The boob tube. If you wanted something else to do you HAD to get creative. What is more creative than play time (the unstructured type)? Today we have multiple e-babysitters (creativity killers): Kids are well suited to the skills required to interact with Playstation but not in more abstract environments necessary to eventually becoming those “untouchable” innovators and entrepreneurs. There is STILL only 24 hours in a day: Parents can’t shovel all that electronic entertainment time into a kid’s brain without it edging something else out: Dinner around the table with a parent who actually ASKS how their school day went, training in faith values that might otherwise encourage a kid to think that there’s a meaning to their own existence beyond me-myself-and-I-and-the-mighty-dollar. Amazingly enough, if parents were to have time to parent their own kids, perhaps we have engaged, hardworking, honest, ethical member of society both in the classroom and the workforce! A functioning society and a equitable economy doesn’t start with the teachers, it begins in the home, which is where the future Wall Street tycoons learn their values!

CONCLUSION:

Friedman trumps education before parenting and innovation before campaign finance reform. Using Friedmans own scapegoats, however, one can conclude that HE is the one who should head back to school and learn to think critically before advancing a backwards argument. Putting the cart in front of the proverbial horse and expecting it to lead the way into this Brave New World never solved anything in the horse-and-buggy era, and it is even more wishful and outmoded now. Education today must be messed up: It produced Friedman and his nonsensical logic!

Skip says, “Start anew.” Nice work if you can get it.

Want implementable el-hi re-form plans? Try:

“A Game Plan for Dramatically Improving the Productivity of the El-Hi Schooling Enterprise”

“Remodeling Schooling: A New Architecture for Preschool to Precollege Instruction”

“Educational Intelligence: Bringing Schools into the 21st Century”

at http://ssrn.com/author=1199505

If there are better ways to go about it, so say.

Skip Olsen