The Real Story Behind Every Business Story

I read, cover to cover, an issue of a fine new business magazine, Portfolio, and sent off a letter to the editor making this point: no matter what biz topic you write about, “the real story” is that our public schools are so dysfunctional they are undermining both American civilization and American business.

I was excited when a staffer wrote back to say they would use part of my letter. Unfortunately, Portfolio (November, ‘07) published a line about a Tyco executive, not the more important comments about the state of education in the USA. So I’ll present those comments here. Frankly, this is an urgent appeal to the business community. Get involved; organize your own local initiatives; appeal directly to parents, students, teachers, and school officials; challenge educators to do a better job. Here’s some background you can use:

People probably know there’s a problem, but do they realize how bad things are? This country has 40,000,000 functional illiterates, a shameful statistic. Jobs are going to India because our schools won’t teach students to write and speak Standard English. Our students don’t compete well with students from other countries. Anyone who ever watched Jay Leno go “Jaywalking” knows there’s a huge decline in general knowledge. Businesses have to waste a lot of money on remedial education. And just this year, Bill Gates and Norman Augustine chaired a commission on productivity. The resulting report was titled “Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century.” Augustine and Gates--two of our most astute business leaders--say we are already at a tipping point: the schools are so impaired they are now threatening our standard of living.

Flashback to a previous government report called “A Nation At Risk,” which made the same points almost 25 years ago. A large panel of experts concluded in 1983 that our school system appears to have been designed by “an unfriendly foreign power.” THAT is my all-time favorite deadpan bombshell. The “foreign power”’ they’re talking about would seem to be our education establishment.

No progress in the past quarter century? That is scary. Everyone should be asking: how can our educators get away with this level of malfeasance? And why do they wish to?

When I first heard about the Augustine-Gates commission, I wanted to shout to Washington, D. C.: “Hey! You had better realize what you’re dealing with.” Our ed establishment appears to me to be one of the world’s largest living dinosaurs. These people are still pursuing John Dewey’s collectivist dreams, wherein the first step is to flatten academic achievement. Seriously, can so much failure and mediocrity arise from simple incompetence? Here’s a more logical explanation: our educators are ideologues, more concerned with social engineering than with academic progress.

When practical people look at the education system, they see nothing but problems. Our educators do not see problems; they see their favorite social theories in action. That’s the essence of our dilemma.

Keep in mind how mixed-up their ideology is. Our educators took Marxist theories about financial capital (it should be distributed more evenly) and misapplied them to intellectual capital (it should be distributed more evenly). Whoops, that’s not easy to do; people are born with such different abilities. No problem, our educators seem to have decided, we’ll simply educate everyone at a low level, so there’s bound to be some serious evening up.

Is there any hope? First, we have to face the unpleasant truth: ideology got us into this mess. Ridding the school system of ideology will help to fix it. Actually, we need a new and better ideology. Here’s my proposal: we push all children to their limits. We don’t start off aiming for dumb and dumber. We aim for smart and smarter.

Interestingly enough, the ed establishment itself always agrees that the public schools ARE a mess. “Of course,” they say, “but give us more money and we’ll fix them.” To which the proper answer is: NO. Private and parochial schools do a better job with less money per student; put aside your counterproductive ideas, and imitate the success stories all around you!

I believe our best hope is an actively engaged business community. Please use any part of this editorial that might help your efforts. (Credit Bruce Deitrick Price/Improve-Education.org). If I can write something for you, let me know.