The most important things are people

Today I read an article about the current education given to children in America, as well as the attempts to reform it.



“It is not hyperbole to say that the state of education in our country is a challenge to our national security. Human capital has never been more important for success in our increasingly competitive world economy. Yet, although the United States invests more in education than almost any other developed nation, its students rank in the middle of the pack in reading and toward the bottom in math and science. On average, U.S. students have fallen behind peers in Korea and China, Poland and Germany, Canada and New Zealand. This puts us on a trajectory toward massive failure.

“Our schools simply must do better. It is essential too that we provide a base of knowledge for our students in order to produce citizens who can serve in the Foreign Service, the intelligence community, and the armed forces. Today, the State Department is struggling to recruit enough foreign language speakers, U.S. generals are cautioning that enlistees cannot read training manuals for sophisticated equipment, and an after action report from the XVIII Airborne Corps in Iraq found that out of 250 intelligence personnel, less than 5 had the “aptitude to put pieces together to form a conclusion.” For the United States to maintain its role of military and diplomatic leadership, it needs highly qualified and capable men and women to conduct its foreign affairs. Knowledge of the world and of foreign languages is essential.”



Later on in the article, it states:

There were very interesting dissents from the task force members, chiefly Randi Weingarten of the United Federation of Teachers, and Harvard University’s Stephen Walt, who says the report “exaggerates the national security rationale for reforming US K-12 education.” No country is likely to match America’s overall military power and technological supremacy for decades, he says, adding: “There are good reasons to improve K-12 education, but an imminent threat to our national security is not high among them.”




Obviously Mr. Weingarten and Mr. Walt have never heard of the Chinese saying,

十年树木，百年树人

Which is about a ruler of ancient China who asked one of his advisors what he should do if he wanted his kingdom to be able to last into the future. The advisor replied, "If you want to survive for another 10 years, cultivate trees (as a natural defense against invaders). If you want to survive for another 100 years, cultivate people of calibre.

Yes, the US is powerful right now, building on the foundation of their forefathers. But what about the future? If you wait for your "supremacy" to last you through a few more decades, by the time you Really need to have an advantage in weapons technology, you can't because your human capital is not there. This is a serious problem of complacency, and lack of planning for the future. And so if you are going to be a sitting duck in the future waiting to be annexed, why even bother defending now what you will soon lose within a century? The key here is to be always ready, before everyone else. Otherwise, you lose when you meet competition, because that's what almost everyone else is trying to do!

I can't help but think about the founder of the great car company, Toyota. He, as the founder, not only made 5 and 10-year plans as is common in the industry, but went so far as to have a 500-year plan for his company! Call that forward planning.




Perhaps I'm a little melodramatic today because I watched Ip Man 2. Christopher told me that it was really good so I went to watch. It was indeed good, but it was obviously also very patriotism-based like the first film, so some parts were intentionally tear-jerkerish (also like the first film). I ended up being a little bit like wanting to achieve justice in the world (or something like that), and when I read that there are still some children in America, especially the blacks and hispanics, who are inherently disadvantaged because of the education system, I just felt really sad and also angry at the nature of the American system. But any kind of system must surely be imperfect, so what can we do? I guess, we can either try to politically tweak the system to try make it better, or we can go out there and individually make a difference.

I found myself wanting to teach music to disadvantaged children, and possibly even gather some music friends playing various instruments, with a 'meet-and-greet' style presentation giving a general introduction to each instrument so that the children could choose what kind of instrument they wanted to learn. Yeah, strange ideas I know, but I just want to record my current feelings right now.