With incoming liberal President-elect Barack Obama (already tending
toward moderation) and an outgoing conservative President Bush
(already tending toward obscurity), we are naturally going to debate
all the issues that liberals and conservatives love to debate:
abortion, same-sex marriage, immigration, public safety,
infrastructure, taxation, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the
current economic crisis.
It is my sincere belief that we will solve these problems, never to
everyone’s satisfaction, but in a way that benefits most Americans
and hurts the fewest. In simple terms, facing and defeating great
challenges is what Americans do best. As a nation, we are the
ultimate sleeping dog. Initially happy to be a British colony, the
Brits could not leave well enough alone and eventually we revolted
and defeated a nation previously thought invincible. We were
isolationist and passive as WWI and WW2 began, until prodded by world
events to enter – and win – both wars. Stumbling along with our space
program until surpassed by the Russians and challenged by President
John F. Kennedy, we did the impossible and put a man on the man in
less than a decade.
We now face two simultaneous challenges that demand the same sort of
commitment we have shown in previous days: energy and education.
As Thomas Friedman details in his excellent new book, Hot, Flat and
Crowded, the future balance of world power may very well hinge on
which country first and most effectively develops the world’s next
source of energy – clean, renewable, affordable energy. Says
Friedman, “This is a great challenge, but also a great opportunity,
one that America cannot afford to miss. Not only is American
leadership the key to healing the earth; it is also our best strategy
for the renewal of America.”
In May of 1961, President Kennedy stood before Congress and
challenged us to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade,
saying, “I believe we possess all the resources and talents
necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made
the national decisions or marshaled the national resources required
for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an
urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to
insure their fulfillment.”
President-elect Obama has an opportunity to do the very same thing
for energy that President Kennedy did for space travel. And we have
an obligation to react with just as much focus and energy as we did
in the 1960’s. It’s quite possible the stakes are even higher now
than they were in 1961.
However, the biggest difference between 1961 and today is education,
or more precisely, the lack thereof. President Kennedy was able to
say that we had the “resources and talents necessary” because we were
the best educated country in the world, which is no longer the case.
Twenty years ago we led the entire world in adults (age 25-34) with
high school and college degrees. According to the Organization for
Cooperation and Development, we have now dropped to 9th and 7th
places, respectively. We are currently 18th in the world in secondary
education. For us to continue being the greatest nation in the world,
we have no choice but to refocus our energy on education. We spend
more per student ($11,152) than any nation in the world, so the
solution can’t simply be money. We have the world standard for
universities (both public and private), but too many of our students
take their American educations and leave for their “home” countries
when they graduate. We need to ensure that the best and the brightest
of American students receive the best possible education.
President-elect Obama has no greater challenge than bringing our
educational system back to preeminence. This means bringing everyone,
private and public, K-12 and secondary, unions, administrators,
business and industry to the same table with a single goal. Find the
best way possible to integrate all aspects of the American education
system into a cohesive, effective system that one again turns out the
best-educated people in the world. This will require that the
brightest and hardest working students get the best possible
education, regardless of their ability to pay. This means that while
we do not want to leave any student behind, we have to recognize that
different students have different capabilities and there is no
generic set of standards, ways of teaching or pre-packaged programs
that will work for everyone.
Most of all, this means that as a nation we have to accept that to
remain great, we need great minds, and for that to happen we need to
have the best possible system of education. The world is moving
quickly and it’s a sure bet that the 17 countries who are doing a
better job of educating their students than we are not going to wait
around for us to catch up. President-elect Obama, it is up to you to
pull together the resources (in people and dollars) and to use your
remarkable skills of persuasion and message of hope and change to
make this happen. The commitment has to be made now and without
reservations. Heed the words of President Kennedy: “If we are to go
only half way, or reduce our sights in the face of difficulty, in my
judgment it would be better not to go at all.” Let’s get going.