Let’s Leave All Politicians Behind

If it is true that stupidity has swept us over the worst economic and political cliffs in the last 70 years, perhaps it’s time to see if education and intelligence can get us out of the valley. I see the Educational Research Center has given the United States a grade of “C” in education, so critics are again blaming public school teachers, administrators, and district school boards for this mediocrity.

The United States, which used to lead the world in high school graduation rates, has fallen to 13th behind such educational bastions as South Korea, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. Some “experts” say our schools utilize too much expensive technology in our classrooms. Others, particularly those who believe in the infernal-eternal testing associated with President George Bush’s Leave No Child Behind program, say we don’t concentrate enough on mathematics and science instruction, so we cancel art, music, PE, and history classes.

Education has now become the favorite whipping boy of politicians who know that educators have difficulty fighting back when politicians control the purse strings. As far as grades go, what grade should politicians get for creating our current economic freefall? I think an “F” still stands for “Failure.” Should federal politicians receive a higher grade than “F” for the political cliffs of Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea and our five percent “favorable” rating among the nations of the world?

How Do We Become Number One Again?

Congress is now in an absolute panic trying to figure out where to throw a trillion dollars so it will stick some place on an economic chart. Some want to build roads, bridges, sewer systems, museums, football stadiums, buy contraceptives by the gross, give tax breaks for all voters, and provide STD prevention kits for everyone. A couple of weak voices want to put some money into developing broadband and Internet services across the United States and funding basic research, whether public or private. Now that is looking ahead long-term. When “Slick Willie” and “Inconvenient Al” left office we were working hard to move up from third to first in the world race for overall use for broadband. Both of them were featured actually helping workers wire schools.

After eight years of the brain-dead Bush administration we are sitting in 16th place instead of first in the use of broadband and the Internet. Basic research has almost hit bottom while most investment money goes to hedge funds to determine winners and losers in casino-type derivatives and credit default swap games. The Asians are cleaning our clock. Over half of South Korean bank accounts are kept on cellphones instead of paper. Singapore and South Korea lead the world in stem cell and genetic research.

If we are ever going to be back in first place economically and politically we have to become first again in the use and development of technology. Let’s face it. We are done building cars, wind generators, solar panels, and TVs. If we manufacture anything it will have to be of the nanotech variety. We have blown many trillions on staying number one militarily—while we fight rifle-toting, prayer-rug carrying insurgents in mean streets. Don’t we have enough $6 billion aircraft carriers?

Six Key Elements In Education

There are six elements in education in which we must lead the world: creativity, innovation, critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, and collaboration. Access to information is the absolute key to those six elements.

We need to stimulate the economy, but it won’t do any good if we don’t stimulate minds at the same time. Dean Kamen, the Segway inventor and developer of hundreds of products, including artificial limbs for our veterans, said it best: “You can bail out a bank; you can’t bail out a generation. You can print money, but you can’t print knowledge. It takes 12 years.” Or longer. Today, billionaires, if they lose a few hundred million in the market, are lying across railroad tracks instead of jumping out of windows. Evidently we have a new trauma—PTMD (Post-Traumatic Money Disorder). Actually it’s a lack of education.

I thought I would give a little test to my computer so I punched in the word “idiot” for a Google Search. My antique came up with 47.9 million references to “idiot” in .04 seconds. Then I tested “genius.” I got a 103 million references in .15 seconds. For a 76-year guy who developed an interest in classical music listening to opera sponsored by Texaco while milking cows, the world has become a thunderous cloudburst of information.

From the time I huddled around the “house” radio with the family listening to the fireside chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I can now tap a few keys in our den and read the London Guardian, send an e-mail around the world, or listen to a radio broadcast from the South Pole. It still amazes me that I can click a mouse and send copies of this column to 300 readers scattered over the country—in three seconds.

Whether pounding on drums, reading smoke signals, listening to telegraph keys click, or watching TV, it is still the tribal rule that the society with the greater knowledge—or the access to it—ends up on top. As Frederick Douglass said, “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”

The computer has to be the greatest education tool since bread was first sliced. Sure, the printing press was invented in the 15th century, but it took over 400 years for significant advances in the printing industry: movable type, the typesetting linotype machine, and offset printing. In 1721 it took 16 hours to set type for a four-page newspaper. With nanotechnology we have recently succeeded in printing the Bible on a grain of rice.

Look at what the computer has become since Bill Gates was ruminating in his dad’s garage . Now we have 24/7 news, magazines for every possible interest, and thousands of bloggers exposing their prejudices, ignorance, and wisdom every second of the day. And today we have people using computers that can make billions of computations per second.

Too Many People Making Money From Money

New York Times Columnist Tom Friedman emphasizes the importance of education in a January 11 column by suggesting that we have not been competitive for some time: “Even before the current financial crisis, we were already in a deep competitive hole—a long period in which too many people were making money from money, or money from flipping houses or hamburgers, and too few people making money from new stuff, with hard-earned science, math, biology, and engineering schools.”

That’s why Friedman insists that the stimulus should be “big and smart,” producing both shovel-ready jobs and workers, but also “more Google-ready jobs and Windows-ready jobs and knowledge-ready workers.” Friedman says, “If we spend $1 trillion… and just get better highways and bridges… your kids will thank you for making it so much easier for them to commute to the unemployment office…” Ouch.

President Barack Obama says we need to retrofit America for a global economy, which means “smart grids and broadband highways” and investments in science, research, and technology that will lead to new medical breakthroughs, nanotech discoveries, and entirely new industries. This is where the politicians, Republican and Democrat, are really brain-dead. Leave No Child Behind would be terrific if we were at the beginning of the 20th century. But 21st century America will have to lead the world in creativity and in areas such as nanotechnology and manufacturing in space. If we can stay ahead of the Chinese and the Indians, that is.

We have to keep researching the brain and its 100 billion neurons. How can an idiot savant remember 25,000 Pi numbers in a row or play a piano concerto perfectly after hearing it once? Why can African pygmies sing and play very sophisticated pentatonic five-part harmony music when they seem to have great difficulty growing their own food? Can we possibly keep parts of the brain free of Alzheimers until the age of 95?

Our Schools Cannot Be Test-Prep Factories

Politicians and corporate types seem to think children are plastic widgets who only have to spend some time on an assembly-line to become good little human androids spending their lives working in widget factories. Let’s hope that is not what life is about.

Students need schools where they can fall in love with books, use technology and the Internet to constantly feed a voracious curiosity, and have time to think deeply about questions that intrigue them. Learning must be a road to a curious, expansive life, not a one-way dreary street to a paycheck. Not all students need to go to college—but they should have the opportunity to do so if they want to. We must give everybody a chance to flex their brains so the electrical pathways are kept open by snapping, popping, crackling synapses. One-size-fits-all multiple-choice tests just don’t add snap and pop. They exude a big “duh.”

Perhaps our politicians should think a little about why 150 million Chinese are becoming fluent in English while only 30,000 American students are learning Chinese. They should also think a little about why we should maintain good relationships with the Republic of the Congo. It exports cobalt to us because we don’t have any. It’s a metal used in jet engines. Global life is certainly getting complicated. Do we have good relationships with Bolivia? It has the world’s largest reserves of lithium—so vital to cellphone batteries.

I think it’s a simple maxim: If we stimulate the mind it will later stimulate a lot of dollars. If we stimulate with roads and bridges, essential as they are, that kind of stimulation is NASCAR thinking.

In Greek mythology, the inventor-genius Daedalus built a labyrinth for King Minos. Later, in a rage over an alleged wrong, Minos imprisoned Daedalus and son Icarus. Daedalus ingeniously made wings for himself and Icarus, and they flew off their island prison. Daedalus landed safely after he had warned his son not to fly too close to the sun. But Icarus flew too high, the wax that held his wings on melted, and he plunged to his death. Creativity allowed the two to escape, but youth and arrogance killed Icarus. There’s a message in there someplace.