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Back to the Forum Archives Remember the sort-of good-old-days? This was a time in our history when the people of the world admired and envied everything American. Everyone wanted to be like us. That was not too long ago as I recall. It was a time span from the end of WWII until the end of the cold war. Now, it seems that has changed, or our perception of it has changed. Suddenly, we have apologists popping up all around America and particularly in our academic community telling us we are out of it. Instead of leading the world, we are behind, they say. We should be trying to emulate the Japanese or the Chinese or even, for God's sake, the Europeans. What brought this home to me is a recent essay my friend found on the Hillsdale college website http://www.hillsdale.edu. It seems this website is the Cyberspace version of IMPRIMIS, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College. The article was from a speech by Robert J. Herbold. He is a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Ain't that grand? This guy had credentials coming out his ears. Here are some of them copied from the essay's header. Robert J. Herbold, a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, is managing director of Herbold Group, LLC, and a retired executive vice president and chief operating officer of Microsoft Corporation. He holds a bachelor of science degree from the University of Cincinnati and a master's degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. in computer science from Case Western Reserve University. Prior to joining Microsoft, he spent 26 years at Procter & Gamble, for the last five as senior vice president of advertising and information services. He serves on the boards of directors of Weyerhaeuser Corporation, Agilent Technologies, First Mutual Bank and Cintas Corporation; the boards of trustees of the Heritage Foundation, Case Western Reserve University, the Seattle Foundation and Overlake Hospital; and the board of overseers of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the president of the Herbold Foundation, which provides college scholarships to science and engineering students, and the author of The Fiefdom Syndrome: The Turf Battles That Undermine Careers and Companies – And How to Overcome Them. I found the title of this article interesting. K -12 Establishment is Putting America's Industrial Leadership at Risk. I don't know if it's intent was to frighten, shock, or impress me. Like most of the sensationalist headlines and television news teases I see it did none of those. It did make me wonder about the integrity of the reporter and it caused me to read the article to see if the banner was somehow justified. Just to be clear, I don't think the headline was written by Herbold. The entire article was adapted from a speech by Herbold, presumably by an editor or reporter of IMPRIMIS. Herbold makes the point that we are not producing as many scientists as we used to. He speaks of experts in science, technology, engineering, and math. It seems we are coming up short in America at the undergraduate level as well as the PHD level. He gives us a big bunch of statistical data to support his premise. It seems, everyone, and especially Asia. is producing more scientists than we are. He says our leadership in the world of technology is at risk. The reason he gives for this decline in our production of scientist is what he sees as a problem in our K-12 educational system. When compared to the kids of other countries, our kids test quite low in proficiency in science and math. In fact, he calls the scores abysmal. His data was collected by a subcommittee of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. So, however you see it, our kids are not as sharp at science and math as the kids of most other countries. The question becomes, "Why?" Of course, Herbold is somewhat like me. He would not ask the question if he did not have an answer. He came up with one reason I have also noticed and commented on. Too many of the people who teach these subjects in K-12 are not qualified. They use the euphemism "out of field" teachers, but that is just small time varnish. They ain't qualified. Then he goes from teacher qualification to our old bugaboo, curricula. The curricula are weak according to this article. We need more years of math and science, especially in high schools. We also need better textbooks. I sure agree with him on the textbooks. What we have is not acceptable at all. Herbold points out that these problems are not new. there have been ongoing problems for several years. He lays the blame at the doors of the entrenched bureaucracies of the teacher's unions and the school administrations. It seems they resist meaningful change of any magnitude. Is that unusual? Those in power will resist change. Now his solution to this problem is to make the teachers and
the administrations accept responsibility for their poor results.
He then offers a whole slew of things the establishments and
teachers need to do to correct the problems. He even advocates
dismissing teachers with poor track records. Holy cow! I'll give
the guy a G for guts. The teacher's union's position on seniority
is not just a holy cow, it is a sacred cow. Of course, he also
advocates budget reform. Less for sports and bureaucrats and
more for education. I'll buy that. What about test scores? That our kids score low on the SAT is not in question. They do. The why of it is one point of disagreement where I believe Herbold misses the mark. I insist it is not weak curricula that is at fault, it is the fact of curricula. Curricula is a way of creating identical graduates. It is a mold for mediocrity. It is a mass production method for operant conditioning. We need a new approach to teaching that eschews curricula. We need an approach that encourages creative behavior for the individual, not conformity. We don't want trained seals, we want creative adults. Now, let's get to the main premise and the title of this piece. K-12 Establishment is Putting America's Industrial Leadership at Risk. Here again Herbold misses the mark. I agree that the American industrial leadership is at risk. I disagree that K-12 education is the cause of that. The cause lies in the inherent dishonesty of American management. It is caused by head down no-risk non-innovative management policies. It is caused by mind numbing selfishness and greed at the highest levels of American corporations. Our leadership in technology has dwindled because the companies do not use the specialist they have. Most American firms will not invest in the development of new products. That is the bottom line. As to engineers, we have all the engineers we need. Engineers are technicians. If we need more we can hire them. They are like coolies, we can hire as many as we need. It does not matter where they went to school. If they come to America from China, they will become Americans after a few years. What we need are leaders. We need a new way of teaching kids so they become philosopher leaders. We need new ethical leaders in industry. We need new ethical leaders in government. We have neither. We are really short on philosopher leaders. In Washington we want what Plato called the philosopher king. Instead, we have an anti-intellect and proud of it, shoot from the hip, wealthy Texas redneck. So what if Asia graduates more engineers? That is not the point. By graduating more engineers, Asia is just trying to catch up with us. They must graduate more than they need because many of them will defect to America. They need a lot of engineers because they have a lot to do. We don't! Much of the stuff they want to do, we have already done. I have no evidence that any American company is complaining about any shortage of engineers. What we need now is a way of holding our people together in pride and honor. w need leadership, not technicians. On the point of training, we are not training enough doctors
either. It does not matter. That just creates opportunities for
foreign born doctors to defect to America. If we really want
more engineers all we have to do is offer them the same kind
of pay and incentives that we offer to manager con men. The foreign
engineers will come to us if we do. Bill Gates does not have
any problem getting the specialists he needs. No one who is willing
to treat their workers decently will have a problem getting good
people. If you want to understand the real problem just read
The Human Side of Enterprise by Douglas McGregor.
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