Eine Kleine Nacktmusik - Why Education Matters

For those non-German speakers, the play on words in the title is an attempt to illustrate a growing issue. "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" is a musical piece and translates to 'a little bit of evening music'. Substituting a 'k' for the 'h' changes the meaning to something like 'a little bit of naked music'. Without getting into the connotations and extrapolations (would that qualify as whispering sweet nothings to a mathematician?), one letter makes a great deal of difference.

I'm reading a book called "What Were They Thinking?" by Jeffrey Pfeffer. It is a great collection of evidence supporting a refusal to follow the status quo when it comes to quality of work, but there is a great deal of other evidence that is also of concern. It has to do with the competitive advantage of the United States, and in about every instance of comparison, it is evident there is some work to be done if we are to regain our advantage.

This is not overtly a topic for the IT or other industries until you dig down deeper to get at the core of the problem. I’ll return in my next post to matters of a more technical nature. For now…

Lack of competitiveness comes from many sources, but mostly from the general knowledgebase and literacy of the populace, however literacy is currently defined. We read in our own press about dwindling job prospects and economic disaster, and we translate that into a need to work longer and more diligently, regardless of the law of diminishing returns that comes from atrophy and fatigue. The simple fact of the matter is that we have become divided into a society where there is a chasm of literacy, and those who have placed a high value on it are struggling to pull those who haven't along into an economic landscape that is based on... information.

By definition, information must be useful in order to convey meaning, which is where its value comes from. Otherwise we call it noise, extraneous data, or something else denoting the need to ignore it. To be able to discern the value of information, it must be able to be understood, read, transmitted and applied, all skills derived from literacy and prevented by the lack thereof. Whether we like to admit it or not, literacy is a by-product of education - the sole by-product, as it turns out, because when you have learned something, you are more literate. This is not education as an institution, but as a concept.

No matter what the issue being addressed when looking at the deficits in ability and competitiveness, we have to come to grips with the realization that our sole advantage will come from the informational product we provide. Based on the observations I have made from my very own teens (want a challenge? I highly recommend dealing with teens, preferably three of them at a time - you'll learn, they'll see an older person lose their mind ... it's fun for the whole family), as well as their friends and classmates, I offer the following to try to restore our competitiveness. Note that it is too late to restore it within the next decade - these trends will take a while to reverse, and any politician or other person who comes to you with an immediate fix will have one hand in your wallet and the other behind their back with fingers crossed.

Here are the four unpleasant truths about restoring our educational fundamentals, and thus our general competitiveness as an economic power, and thus our specializations of excellence:

1) Reading matters, evaluation counts.

Kids will not read of their own volition, unless they happen to like it, or they find a topic that excites them, but that is a poor excuse to give up on them learning how. When I look at the textbooks my children use in school, I am astounded any of the students can possibly get anything less than an A in their classes. The words students used to be required to read through and learn how to discern value in are now highlighted, underlined, italicized and, in some cases, boldfaced. The problem with this is that information is not presented that way in real life. When these children grow up, they will not receive a contract that has the same treatment, so since they will wind up thinking information that is not clearly pointed out to them is not important, they will sign away many things that a careful examination would have prevented. Children need to once again be taught critical analysis of the written word.


2) OMG!! git rid of l33tsp33k b4 itz 2L8.

Compression belongs in processors, not in native data. Some educators have placed a white flag high in the air and come to the conclusion it is okay that kids are shortening things into almost nonsensical collections of letters and numbers because it means they are at least composing and producing something. To be somewhat vulgar, the same description belongs to flatulent livestock!

Laziness in composition is a problem compounded when the same people who began using a non-standard form of communication begin to try to communicate with the world around them. The international language of business is English, but it is standard English, not a hybrid. An example, telling on myself, is that I used an IT-specific, Americanized acronym in a professional presentation. Immediately a barrier to understanding developed between me and a colleague from the Asia-Pacific rim. I had to go back and clarify what I meant, and it had nothing to do with his ability to understand or speak English (he was very adept) and everything to do with my unintentional use of information that was not clear.

Before continuing on with presenting a concept that was professionally-important I had to correct an unintentional use of jargon - how much worse would it have been had I intentionally jargonized throughout the presentation? At a conference, he would have just dismissed my ideas. In the business world, he would have gone elsewhere, and done it in a way that would render my jargon-mongering self unemployed. This is not hyperbole, it will happen, so we need to teach kids how to communicate clearly.


3) Sports are nice, band is nice, choir is nice and art is nice. Communication, computation and critical thinking are key.

Our local school system allows students to participate in sports and other extra-curricular activities while still carrying a D average in their grades. They are in effect surrendering their futures all in the name of ‘fun’. There are exceptions to every rule, and there are some students with true inabilities to gain full benefit from education, but the vast majority would do better if they had to do better in order to play what they want to play. Saying that sports or any other activity is the only way to keep some kids in school is a farce, because if they are not learning anything, and the only thing they do is play, why is it important for them to be there? Our society has dropped its respect for learning and replaced it with a back-biting competitiveness that turns us against one another inwardly. That’s not competition, that’s cannibalism!

I played sports, was involved in band in school, and I know all about the positive benefits they provide. I also know that the only vocation that awaits someone with the typical high school band practice schedule but abhorrently below average grades involves a subway station and a hat on the ground! If we are to be a competitive nation, we desperately need to raise the level of what average is considered to be, so that what was average becomes below average and thus the standard is raised.

Let kids play sports and do the extra-curricular activities, but if we want to compete globally, those have to be extraneous, not seen as rights. Extra-curricular means outside the curriculum, and we need to act on that knowledge. When we bring them inside the school building and the school day, we take the extra out of extra–curricular. I’m glad my son receives an “A” in P.E., I’d much rather see it on the line that begins “Algebra”.

We like to sometimes pretend we feel differently about this, mostly because it’s our own children who aren’t the Rhodes scholars (“Dad, this Rhodes scholar thing, - why would anyone want to study roads?” The sound of a palm meeting a forehead…), but rare is the person who would allow a surgeon to operate on them who received a “D” in Anatomy but an “A” in gym. It’s tempting to point to that as an extreme example, but when the commerce of our economy is built upon information, those who work with information are the new doctors. The patient is the economy instead of a physical body, but a poor practitioner causes harm to their patient in whatever field you examine.

I saw this at work in Europe where there were no school sports, just clubs a student could join that met after school, but for whom no excuse or allowance was made in the school. There were orchestras and other groups, but they all took place when school was done. The same is true in the same Asia-Pacific region that is now beating us in the global competition to thrive. I wouldn’t trade the spirit of freedom and ingenuity for a poorly-executed copy of another educational system, but we as a nation will suffer the longer we refuse to acknowledge that we are soft at the core. Borrowing an understanding which then leads to a solution is not the same as stealing an idea.


4) It is not the school's fault!

It seems each year as my wife and I talk to our kids' teachers, hand them our full contact information and tell them that if there are any problems in the classroom or in any other way with them to let us know and the problems will be addressed immediately, they are continually surprised that parents would feel that their children’s job is to learn well and not be disruptive. The stories about how they are accused of singling out children, picking on children, etc. abound. I'll be the first to say, from personal experience that there are some teachers who act in this manner. There are very few. I will also point out that there are some managers in real life who do this to their employees. Again, very few. The life skill that leads to competitive advantage is learning how to deal with adversity. If a competitor acts in a very unfriendly manner, our response cannot be to get sour grapes, discontinue efforts and poor-mouth throughout the space. We have to excel, even during adversity.

I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of parents who get upset continually at those who teach their children either suffered a great deal of frustration when they went through school, or suffer under the illusion they could not possibly have children who are anything less than perfect. The brutal truth is that children are flawed, and they do the wrong thing sometimes, sometimes more often than they do the right thing. As adults, we need to teach them to work within systems rather than stand proudly outside while our advantages are stripped away by some misguided sense of pride. Pride comes from being competitively fit, not from tilting against windmills.

Believe it or not, parents have far more to do with their children’s education than do the teachers. If children don’t bring their books home to study, it is their fault, and thusly the parent’s fault for not insisting on it. If a child rebels and refuses to bring their materials home (HOMEwork, which most have given up on and many classes don’t assign anymore, as well as textbooks and notes) it is not up to the teachers to provide reminders to them, but up to the parents to provide incentives and deterrents as the case may demand. Parenting is difficult, education is difficult, life is difficult, ad nauseum. If everything is easy you are either doing the wrong thing, or you are doing the right thing the wrong way. It is the occasional struggle that produces the backbone we need to compete.

This is a simplistic approach, but it is one that has to begin. It is not thoroughly fair and respectful to every single group, sub-group or other division of society in every aspect, but it is necessary to restore us to the point where we should be. There will be people who are angry about the perceived injustices within a traditional educational system, and they will have a point. Here’s the bottom line, though: we cannot have both true competitive advantage and a life of ease. When my kids come home to tell me that they “know” their teacher doesn’t like them, I tell them the same thing I’d tell them if they were talking about their boss: deal with it and make sure you do what you are supposed to do.

When they complain because they happened to have homework, I remind them that adults sometimes have to work past 5:00, so it’s good practice. They are beginning to ‘get it’. This is still the land of opportunity, and still the greatest place to be. Their opportunities are effective when they are, and I hope to get the message through to others so we can rise to this occasion.