December 8, 2011 - knowledge has a price
I've been presenting this week to librarians, Friends organizations, and board members in North Carolina. Speaking with me has been one Bill Millett, a consultant who does a lot of work with libraries.
Millett is a former economic development person, and he has some interesting things to say about that. For a long time, he noted, North Carolina was winning the economic development game across the nation. They were landing one big company after another. Why? Because they had cheap labor.
But that's begun to change. Some of those companies are leaving. Now, the competition isn't just national, it's global. There is no way that any place in America can keep providing the cheapest labor in the world.
More to the point, that's not even what companies are looking for anymore. They want skilled labor. He talked about a company in Dallas that moved overseas because they had 5,000 vacant highly technical positions -- and not enough qualified applicants.
We know that China and India are spending a lot of time and attention on education. Their instruction is now heavily focused not just on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (the so-called STEM disciplines), but also on developing the creativity of young students. Maybe you've seen the numbers: there are more people in the top 25% of their student population than we have students.
Amid the campaign talk about American exceptionalism, it might behoove us to notice that we're not even in the top twenty of international student performance (according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Programme for International Student Assessment). In Colorado, a quarter of our students aren't graduating from high school -- half of them, in Denver, our capital. National research suggests that we may be raising the first generation of Americans who will be LESS educated than their parents.
To Millett, this willful erosion of what he calls our "knowledge infrastructure" -- the investment in early literacy, through higher education, to the continuous retooling that will be necessary in a global economy -- is a kind of treason. Our leaders are frittering around with pointless political gotchas when the livelihood of our children and grandchildren, and our standing as a nation, are imperiled.
He tells the story about a company that relocated to Charlotte some years ago, bringing 1,200 jobs with them. He writes, "Charlotte was a finalist along with Atlanta, Dallas, Tampa and Nashville. On the day that he announced that Charlotte had been selected, the company president said that all of the cities had much to offer. What made Charlotte the winner were a few factors that distinguished it from the competition, among them the quality of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library."
Since then, of course, that library has closed branches, laid off staff, and shut down a series of award-winning programs. The problem? Funding.
Millett, a Baby Boomer, said, "People who served in World War II are now known as the Greatest Generation. How will our generation be remembered?"
The Greatest Generation responded to the threat of Sputnik by putting man on the moon.
We never went back. [Correction: yes, we did. But our last manned moon trip was in 1972, 39 years ago.] These days, even our upper atmospheric shuttles are all worn out.
Which country will launch tomorrow's satellites? Where will they learn the skills and the attitudes that build confidently toward a better future?
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LaRue's Views are his own.
It is bad enough that you recite the disproved theories about education in the US....then you trot this out:
ReplyDelete>>> The Greatest Generation responded to the threat of Sputnik by putting man on the moon.
>>> We never went back. These days, even our upper atmospheric shuttles are all worn out.
There was never any Sputnik threat. We let them go first to establish how space would be used -- read Gerald Bracey.
The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, launched in 1991, fell to earth after serving its purpose in space for 20 years.
We never went back to the moon????? Not only did we go back but we have done tons of stuff up there in space, exploring and sending back info. And we and sent lots more spacecraft to explore (Hubble) and USED those shuttles until we were done with them. Do you even know what we just launched? Think Mars.
WE DO NOT EDUCATE CHILDREN TO PROVIDE A LABOR FORCE.
We educate children so that we will have civilized adults. The world sends it best and brightest HERE, because this is where education is the best. Our dropout rate decreased for en entire century. A librarian could look it up for you.
Are the K-12s on the wrong path? Yes. Why? Because they are governed by politicians who read gibberish by people who recite myths instead of finding out facts.
Thanks for responding. But it's hard to respond back. Which disproved educational theories do you mean? Who disproved them, and when?
ReplyDeleteAnd was there a second landing of PEOPLE on the moon that I missed? My point is that manned missions have ceased.
The launching of Sputnik had no military significance (the ability to launch a missile that could reach our nation)? That seems naive.
If you believe that our children are better educated than those of a generation ago, please cite your sources. You are aware that we are now sending more of our top students overseas than ever before? My daughter was one of them.
I stand by my point. The United States is dismantling our educational and knowledge infrastructure.
Is education about more than jobs? Sure. But in Douglas County, the prevailing notion of educational reform is to give public money to send children to schools that teach the world is 6,000 years old and evolution is a myth. I can't imagine what jobs we might be CAPABLE of. Or how our children will be more civilized as their ignorance increases.
Are you kidding?
ReplyDeleteDo you bother to research anything you write about?
wikipedia even knows:
A total of twelve men have landed on the Moon. This was accomplished with two US pilot-astronauts flying a Lunar Module on each of six NASA missions across a 41-month time span starting on 21 July 1969 UTC, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 (with Armstrong being first to set foot on the surface), and ending on 14 December 1972 UTC with Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt on Apollo 17 (with Cernan being the last to step off the lunar surface). All Apollo lunar missions had a third crew member who remained onboard the Command Module. The last three missions had a rover for increased mobility.
as I said before, read Gerald Bracey
ReplyDeleteit is easy -- just google his name -- tons of stuff out there -- pick one of the rotten apple awards
and please don't think that because your local school board is ignorant that all are -- do some research
ask the questions, "How does poverty affect standardized test results? How does US poverty compare to say, Finland?"
tell us the name of the Dallas company --- that sounds like a Willard Daggett myth....
You think the rocket that put tiny sputnik in orbit could deliver a bomb to the US?
ReplyDeleteWow.
What was your major?
I think I figured out the problem.
ReplyDeleteDo you think that Tom Hanks was one of the people that walked on the Moon?
Yep, you're right. 12 men have walked on the moon. Poor research on my part, and that's what happens sometimes when one writes from memory. The last landing was 1972. You caught me out in a misstatement. Thank you for that gracious correction. (Although of course there was nothing gracious about it.) I'm actually glad to know that.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, Mr. Moore, that would be 39 years ago. The POINT of my article is that the United States of today is no longer investing in the future in a way that is definitive.
It happens that I spoke to a man who was involved in the moon launch (as one of the rocket designers). And yes, he told me that the rocketry research that enabled the launch of Sputnik did indeed cause the American military great concerns for just the reasons I cited. The capacity of the Soviet launch suggested a new military threat.
I used to follow a lot of space stuff. I believed then, and now, that there were many compelling reasons to establish a human presence off-planet. There have been whole species extinctions on our planet; we have the technological capacity to establish L-5 or terra-forming colonies. Yet we never did. My apologies for sloppy writing. But again, I stand by the point: we didn't go "back" means that we didn't fulfill the promise that began with that first successful moon landing. Unmanned probes are good science, and they're certainly cheaper. But they also speak to a failure of imagination. Too, there really is a nationwide decline in producing the "best and brightest." And that research is solid.
The Golden Age of Education Never Was
ReplyDeleteBy Walt Gardner
February 7, 2011
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/walt_gardners_reality_check/2011/02/the_golden_age_of_education_never_was.html
Please read before you post again:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/the-great-big-engine-that_b_67129.html
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=684
ReplyDeleteThanks for the links, I read 'em. But I wasn't school bashing, as I gather you seem to think. And those pieces don't invalidate my points. I was talking about the growing unwillingness of Americans to invest in education, and the importance of education to our nation. The first two articles you linked to were just opinion pieces. The Bracey stuff actually made some factual claims, and that was interesting. His comments about the role of poverty in education scores is intriguing -- but then, our poverty rates are hardly something to brag about, either. But if all of this is supposed to be an argument for educational complacency, I don't buy it. See, just for instance, the book "Fool Me Twice," by Shawn Lawrence Otto, about the concerted attack on science and science education in this country. What's your point, anyhow?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Fool-Me-Twice-Fighting-Assault/product-reviews/1605292176/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addOneStar
ReplyDeletefrom my original post:
Are the K-12s on the wrong path? Yes. Why? Because they are governed by politicians who read gibberish by people who recite myths instead of finding out facts.
BTW -- Rover is now in its fifth year of exploring Mars.
An interesting citation. Here's another. "... the problems he identifies are quite real. Fool Me Twice offers a compelling consideration of the United States' political estrangement from science." -Science Magazine.
ReplyDelete