Education is the new National Security

In a recent column in the New York Times (“Teaching for America”, New York Times, Nov. 20, 2010), Thomas Friedman writes that the new “epicenter of national security” is the Department of Education. He argues that in a world where America is facing global economic competition from emerging economies, our country’s long-term prosperity and economic security depends on the quality of education that our children receive today.

There are several trends that are making education the new “national security” issue:

America is falling behind in education. Friedman’s column cites some worrisome statistics:

• One-quarter of U.S. high school students drop out or fail to graduate on time.
• America is tied for ninth in the world in the percentage of our people who complete a college degree.
• Almost one million American students drop out of school each year.
• 75 percent of young Americans, between the ages of 17 to 24, are unable to enlist in the military today because they have failed to graduate from high school, have a criminal record, or are physically unfit.

Education and competition: President Obama has said that “the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow.” America is facing an increasingly complex and competitive global economy, with emerging markets like China, India, Russia and Brazil becoming more sophisticated and able to compete with American technologies, products and services. If Americans are going to continue to compete for the high-paying jobs of tomorrow that will provide the high standard of living we’ve grown accustomed to, we need our future workforce to be highly skilled.

A coming wave of teacher retirements: Friedman’s column cites statistics that there are 3.2 million active teachers in America today, and half of them will retire during the next 10 years. America needs to take a hard look at how we recruit, hire, pay and retain our teachers – we’re learning more and more that teacher quality is the most important factor in determining how much students learn. There’s no substitute for a great teacher – and we need to do a better job of identifying and rewarding our best teachers so that they are motivated to stay in the classroom.

Core skills for future success: Tony Wagner, author of “The Global Achievement Gap” has identified three core skills that are most important for the knowledge economy: critical thinking and problem-solving, communication, and collaboration. Simply put, our kids need to learn how to think, how to talk and write about ideas, and how to get along with others. Finland and Denmark are two of the countries that are the best in the world at teaching these skills (according to international tests), and they recruit teachers from the top third of their college graduating classes. As Tony Wagner says: these other countries “took teaching from an assembly-line job to a knowledge-worker’s job.”

Teaching is the new nation-building: South Korea refers to its teachers as “nation builders.” This is a powerful concept – teachers truly are building the foundation for the nation’s future, and we need to find ways to elevate the professionalism and prestige of the teaching profession.

As U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says, “Incremental change isn’t going to get us where we need to go. We’ve got to be much more ambitious. We’ve got to be disruptive. You can’t keep doing the same stuff and expect different results.”

If America wants to continue to be a land of opportunity with a prosperous economy, we need to re-think our approach to education. Otherwise, we’re in danger of falling behind the rest of the world, where students are eager to learn and compete with American kids for the jobs of the future.

Ben Gran is a former teacher, freelance writer and marketing consultant based in Des Moines, Iowa. He is an award-winning blogger who loves to write about careers and the future of work.



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