Can We Really Blame Bush and Obama for the Problems in American Public Education?

Posted on October 14, 2013 by admin

In a recent post on Diane Ravitch’s blog a reader suggests that “It will take years, maybe decades to recover from the mess Bush and Obama have generated in our schools.”

To blame Bush and Obama for ruining education is like trying to blame the EPA for the polluted lake they were striving to clean up. What we have been doing for the last fifty years, both in terms of business as usual and also in terms of a half century’s worth of failed reforms, are the things that led us to our status as a second class educational system. The way we should approach our current challenge is something that teachers, more than anyone, should understand. When something doesn’t work, we do not blame someone for trying rather we strive to understand how and why what they did failed to work. In other words, we need to learn from our mistakes.

Think of the scientific principle. We develop a hypothesis and then we test it. Based upon what we learn from the outcomes of our efforts we make adjustments in our hypothesis and then we try again, repeating the process until we are able to consistently predict the results of our efforts.

Imagine what the world would be like today if, throughout the history of mankind, we blamed people for their failures and chose to cling to past practices rather than trying something new. Had that been the protocol of historical man, we would now be living in an extended version of the stone age.

The reason why education as evolved into the a system where an unacceptable number of children fail is because we have spent the last fifty years trying to make incremental improvements in a technology that has become obsolete. This is what educational professionals have done and this is what policy makers have been doing whether their backgrounds are in education or business.

If the reader will pardon another historical metaphor, imagine if we were still striving to make incremental improvements in horse-driven transportation technology.

I do not envision that privatizing education can get us where we need to be but that does not mean that business principles are irrelevant when addressing the problems of education in America. What happens in business is that the world in which our customers live and conduct business is undergoing relentless and often revolutionary change. For a supplier to be successful, they must take the time to understand what has changed in our customer’s business environment and find new solutions for them. More often than not this means replacing rather that re-working old technology. Failure to understand and effectively respond to ever-changing customer expectations means loss of market share followed by business failure.

What we must understand about this Twenty-first Century is that the playing field in which the United States must compete is undergoing relentless, radical, and transformational change. In response to these changes, our competitors are leaping into the future where they are finding new and innovative ways to respond to these changes. In the meantime, Americans trudge along, yearning for the good old days that are forever lost to us.

The reality in Twenty-first Century America is that our educational process is failing to produce the kind of results necessary to compete in the international marketplace and if we don’t figure out what to do about it right now, the golden era of the United States of America, once the richest, most innovate, and productive nation in the history of the world, will grind to a sudden and unpleasant halt.

I encourage the reader to check out my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America in order to understand how to utilize a systems-thinking approach. Only through such an approach will we be able to challenge our fundamental assumptions about the educational process and then re-engineer the system to do what we so desperately need it to do.

The one certainty facing us is that, should we fail to transform our systems of education, both public and private, in fifty years China and other developing nations of the world will be looking to the U.S. for their supply of cheap labor because that is all the American people will be qualified to provide.

The Failure of Public Education and Poverty: Symptoms of the Same Pathology

Posted on October 12, 2013 by admin

In a recent post on the Blog of Diane Ravitch, she talked about Michael Petrilli’s assertion that education can solve the problem of poverty.

It is my belief that understanding the relationship between poverty and the problems of our systems of education is crucial to fixing education.

Michael Petrilli’s assertion that education can fix poverty may have a ring of truth to it but for reasons other than those that he offers. What is incorrect is to suggest, as many do, that there is a causal relationship between poverty and the problems of public education in America. Clearly one is influenced by the other and vice versa but that is as far as it goes.

In my new book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America, I suggest that poverty, deteriorating neighborhoods, the failure of so many American children, bad schools, and burned out teachers are all symptoms of the same underlying pathology. That we do not recognize the true nature of the relationship contributes greatly to the failure of educational reforms over the past half century.

I suggest that race has nothing to do with this failure but culture is another matter, entirely. There is a expanding population of American men and women who have lost faith and hope in the American dream and no longer believe that they possess control over the outcomes in their lives. These Americans reside under a blanket of hopelessness and powerlessness. What has happened as this cultural phenomenon has evolved since the end of World War II, is that an increasingly more pervasive cultural disdain for education has emerged and it transcends race.

Whatever the ethnicity of a subculture that is characterized by this disdain for education, children in these communities are not taught to value education and are not reared in an environment that would foster a strong motivation to learn. In a time when the American dream has become meaningless, an education, which for generations has been viewed as a pass of admission to the dream, is now a ticket to nowhere. The children from these cultural pockets throughout much of urban America, and in some rural communities, arrive for their first day of school with precious little motivation to learn an even less preparation. There, they are greeted by a system that is poorly equipped to respond to the challenges that these students present and by educators who are as much victims of the system as are their students. For huge numbers of these children our educational process sets them up for failure and humiliation and figuratively chews them up and spits them out.

That teachers and their principals are bewildered that these children are disruptive, earn failing grades and disappointing scores on state competency exams is, itself, bewildering. One wonders how intelligent men and women could ever be persuaded to expect anything else. Pleas to parents for help and support are shunned by men and women who, themselves, are products of the same educational process. The expectations of these parents are that schools exist to keep the kids out of their hair for five days a week and they resent the intrusion.

In Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream, I reject the conventional wisdom about the reasons for the academic failure of a growing percentage of American children and offer an alternative hypothesis. I suggest that the problems with education in the U.S. are 1) this burgeoning disdain for education on the part of parents and the resulting lack of motivation on the part of their children, and 2) an educational process that is focused on failure. The very fact that children can fail contributes greatly to a reality in which so very many of them do.

The book then outlines 19 specific action strategies for reinventing the educational process to one in which children are taught how to succeed within the context of ever-rising expectations followed by 14 action strategies for re-packaging and reselling the American dream and then re-engaging parents as full partners with the teachers and principals; sharing responsibility for the education of their children. The book is available at this website www.melhawkinsandassociates.com where you can learn more about the book and also where you can explore my blog, THE LEADer, (Thinking Exponentially: Leadership, Education, and the American Dream)

A Healthcare Story: A Health Insurance Victim

Posted on October 10, 2013 by admin

A young woman in Indiana, twenty-eight years of age, seemed poised for a good life. She liked her job in a small professional office where she was respected for her consistent performance. She enjoyed the people with whom she worked and she was engaged to be married, in only a few months, to a young man with whom she was thoroughly in love. Life was happy, busy, and could hardly have been better so she paid little attention when she experienced occasional dizziness and a slight numbness in her left arm and leg. These symptoms were followed by blurred vision and headaches and, at the urging of her family and her fiancée, she went to her doctor.

Although she had no health insurance—her employer was a small business and offered no employee benefits—her physician was able to arrange for a stream of increasingly more sophisticated and more expensive diagnostic procedures and, a referral to a neurologist. The diagnosis was Multiple Sclerosis. By this time the young woman’s symptoms had progressed and her physician pronounced her disabled and unable to work. Reluctantly she quit her job—at that time she truly was unable to perform her duties–and applied to Social Security for a disability.

After a lengthy process, during which her symptoms began to abate, the application for disability was rejected by Social Security. Although she felt much better, and was able to return to work, she was told that the MS symptoms might recur and could be even more debilitating. She was now a twenty-nine year old woman whose life was not so promising. She was unemployed, thousands of dollars in debt, and lived with the fear her health could deteriorate at any time. Her fiancée had stuck by her during the ordeal but the couple was advised to postpone their wedding, as a husband would become liable for her indebtedness. Heartbroken, frightened, discouraged and deeply in debt, she filed for bankruptcy.

Eventually she found a new job – her previous one no longer available – and although she didn’t care for the work or co-workers nearly as well as her prior job, a group health plan was offered. Unfortunately her MS was ruled as a pre-existing condition that would not be covered, at least during the first year. The monthly payroll deduction for the health insurance premium reduced her take home pay by twenty percent.

This young woman had become a victim, not only of her illness, but also of the system. The healthcare providers who took the financial risk to provide care for this patient were left with little choice but to write off a portion of the charges for their service. Although not visible to the public, costs such as these must be born by the system and they fuel the fires of medical inflation. There is no such thing as a free service, and someone, somewhere must pay.

Are Free Market Forces Good for Healthcare?

Posted on October 8, 2013 by admin

Contrary to popular belief, the problems with the American Health Care System are not the result of market forces run amok. In fact, just the opposite is true. The American health care system languishes because the forces of the free market are unable to exert their influence. Imagine, if you will, how our free market system would look if it functioned like our health care system.

Imagine that you are sitting at home, watching television, and something feels out of sync. You can’t put your finger on what it is you are feeling but it is nagging at you and keeping you out of sorts. After a few days, the problem seems to be worsening and you are really beginning to worry. Finally, you pick up the phone and place a call to your local retail professional and make an appointment.

On the appointed day you arrive at your local mall or shopping center and you describe your symptoms to your retail professional. Your retail professional listens intently, asks a few questions, and then diagnoses your problem and offers a treatment protocol to make you feel better. Your retail professional tells you that the problem is that your home entertainment system is not meeting your minimum daily requirements. As a solution, your retail professional tells you that what you need is a new home entertainment system with state-of-the-art technology.

Now, it just so happens that you retail professional has the perfect home entertainment system to sell to you and guess what? It’s covered by your retail insurance policy. In checking your benefits it turns out that you’ve already satisfied your deductible so your insurance is going to cover eighty percent of the total cost of your new system.

What your retail professional may not explain to you is that your home entertainment system exceeds the usual and customary charges for such items so the insurance is not going cover your retail professional’s full cost. She’s not worried, however, because there are a number of accessories she can sell to you that are covered and these will more than make up for the difference.

I know this sounds a little silly, but think about how our free market economy would work if the merchants with whom we do business would decide for us what we need and how much we are going to pay, and that we would be happy to accept their decisions without question because our insurance is going to pay for the merchandise, anyway. This is exactly how the healthcare system works today and we wonder why costs continue to rise at or above the rate of the Consumer Price Index.
The problem with the American health care system is not that doctors make too much money, the problem is that the incentives in healtcare reward the wrong behavior. The problem is not that health insurance companies, managed care, Medicare or Medicaid absorb huge chunks of our health care dollar, the problem is that these entities exist at all.

Think about it for a moment. If we really want to provide universal health care what value do health insurance, managed care, Medicare and Medicaid contribute? Don’t these entities exist to restrict access to care to only those who are eligible for coverage? Don’t these entities exist to limit care to only those services that are covered by our schedule of benefits and for which we have paid?

If we want to provide comprehensive health care to all Americans we have to change the way we think about our health care system. There is a solution but it resides outside the boundaries of conventional thinking.

Visit my website atwww.melhawkinsandassociates.com and check out my book, Radical Surgery: Reconstructing the American Health Care System. In fact, tell all of your friends about it.

Another “5 Star” Review for Light and Transient Causes, by Mel Hawkins

Posted on October 5, 2013 by admin

This “5 Star” review was posted on Amazon.com on 10/5/13

This is a superb book. Set in the near future in the USA, or maybe the Disunited States would be more apt, the author shows just how easy it is to turn a civilized tolerant nation into a fascist dictatorship in no time at all. Just two presidencies after Obama, the authorities are rounding up ethnic minorities, and shipping them off to who knows where. Well observed, and not at all far fetched, it’s only too easy to imagine this happening. The central characters are very well written and the dialogue flows smoothly. You actually want to know what happens next. Mel Hawkins has done a splendid job in juggling all the twists, turns and complications of this very believable novel. I think that this is his first work of fiction (Amazon don’t have any others) but what a start! Books like this don’t come along very often so if you’ve read this far in the reviews, you can stop now and just buy it. You won’t be disappointed.

Obamacare aka the Affordable Care Act Mis-Named!

Posted on October 4, 2013 by admin

The Affordable Care Act, affectionately or not so affectionately called Obamacare has been misnamed. It should have been called the Affordable Health Insurance Act because it addresses the issues of healthcare, only indirectly.

What Obamacare does is allow people to purchase health insurance coverage for themselves and their families. “Allow” is not the right word, however, as the law is set up with penalties for families who do not enroll in a health insurance plan within a designated time frame.

The types of health insurance coverage that will be available to people will vary as each individual or family will be shopping for coverage that seems to best fit their unique requirements.

The ACA also asks health insurance providers to incur more risk by eliminating provisions like pre-existing conditions. Apparently, it is a trade off for being assured of getting more business.

We admire the sentiment of the act, which was intended to reduce the number of Americans who are uninsured and, therefor, not able to get the medical or hospital care that they need.The logic is somewhat confounding, however.

Rather than make health care available to all Americans as a right of citizenship, as so many other nations have done, it was decided to require everyone to have health insurance. How they arrived at the next logical conclusion, which was to penalize people who are unwilling or who think themselves unable to pay for the now more readily available coverage, is somewhat of a mystery.

The problem with Obamacare is that it will commit our nation to a future in which we are tied to the health insurance industry. Almost certainly, the people of other developed nations must be shaking their heads in bewilderment at those crazy Americans. I’m sure they must be asking themselves why we think it a good idea to do business with a middle man who only adds cost and complexity to the process of delivering needed healthcare to people.

It is hard to come up with a comparison that illustrates the absurdity of the concept but here’s an example that at least comes close.

Earlier I used the example of fire protection for citizens and asked the reader to imagine a scenario where the fire department pulls up to your burning home and asks to see your fire insurance card before they will turn on their hoses.

In most communities in the U.S., people have determined that everyone deserves fire protection and that the community will pay for that protection with tax dollars.

I have heard of a few communities where citizens are asked to pay a direct fee for fire protection. Now imagine that, in these latter communities, a problem has developed because not everyone is willing to or can afford to pay the fee for their fire protection. This theoretical community could decide to solve the problem the way most American communities have, by paying for fire protection with local tax dollars even if this initially requires an increase in property tax rates, the adoption of some type of local option income tax, or even some type of earmarked sales tax. Whatever the method of taxation, these communities have made fire protection a right of citizenship.

Now, lets consider that there is another community that still requires individual property owners to pay a separate fee for fire protection and that this community is also concerned that not everyone seems willing to pay for fire protection. The leaders of this community are not willing, however, to make fire protection a right of citizenship in their community.

Instead, someone comes up with the idea that requires insurance companies to provide at least a minimal level of fire protection coverage, no matter what the condition of individual properties, and also requires all citizens to purchase fire protection insurance coverage or pay a penalty.

Now, it is difficult to imagine that any community would choose such an approach because common sense would dictate that it will almost certainly cost more to pay a middle man for fire protection insurance than it would be to pay for it directly, through tax revenue. After all, the middle man has to cover their operating costs and, because we live in a free market society, make a profit.

Why is it that so many Americans seem so wrapped up in their daily activities and challenges that they are unable to step back and think about what they are doing and why?

Review of Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream

Posted on October 3, 2013 by admin

Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream, by Mel Hawkins

A Review, by Ron Flickinger

I just finished reading the current draft of Mr. Mel Hawkins book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for 21st Century America, and have decided that it is something, particularly Part I, that should be read by a wide variety of audiences. In general, on a scale of one to ten, I would consider American Education (not Public Education as Mr. Hawkins identifies it) to be no more than a two. If totally implemented, Mr. Hawkins recommendations would move it up to at least an “Eight”. . . . his well-researched suggestions would advance our culture by light years.

Chapter 6 entitled, “The Role of Culture” was one of the best, well-written/easily read overviews of the impact of the culture wars on the preparation of our young I have ever read. Not sure that there is anything new in this, but it is so comprehensive, yet so concise that the words literally jumped off the page at me.

This is the first author I think I have ever read who finally attacked the evil of compulsory education. His rationale for moving compulsory education to the age of 14 would, I think, be justification enough to get rid of it completely and put the choice of providing state-sponsored education fully in the hands of parents when their children reach whichever arbitrary age seems most appropriate. Compulsory education is a complete contradiction and it’s about time someone attacked it. We value the things we choose, not the things fostered upon us in an arbitrary and hap-hazard manner. Hats off to this author for so clearly bringing this out.

Every school staff should read chapter 1 and 2 and use them to evaluate their programs and attitudes toward young people and learning.

The other tremendous positive is Mr. Hawkins point-blank, simple attack on the ridiculous system of placing young people in grade levels based upon age. In my entire professional life, I have never found any study which supports this. Every learning theorist I ever read gives a wide variance in brain/social/background readiness for every academic objective in every grade level. If learning were the true goal of schools, common sense would tell us to evaluate current status and build from there. This book is extremely clear on this point and the very fact that few places do this, public or private, shows the resistance to reality American educators embrace.

I share this author’s vision that all work is honorable and all humans are uniquely designed to function in ways that benefit the entire society. The student who likes to tinker with machines and is not at all interested in literature should not be held in less esteem at school than the lit student. The larger social system will value some skills more than others and will obviously pay more for those skills, but the culture has to find a way to communicate to its young that the guy that gets your plumbing right enhances the quality of your life just as much as the mayor of your city.

Educators continue to embrace the elitist notion that academic success is the end-all, do-all for financial, social, and emotional success. Any reform of American education must include respect for all God’s children, not the 20 percent who happen to intuitively respond to academic activities.

Ron Flickinger
Career & Technical Education Consultant
Fort Wayne, IN

The Acts of a Faction of Elected Officials Places Democratic Principles at Risk!

Posted on October 1, 2013 by admin

Forget, for a moment, how you feel about the Affordable Care Act (we should call it the Affordable Health Insurance Act but that is a discussion for another time). Forget about what you think about the national debt, government spending, entitlements for the disadvantaged, national defense, public education, or protecting the environment. All of these issues are important, to be sure, but not one is anywhere near as important as what you think about the principles of democracy in a world where powerful men and women can force a government shutdown to get what they want.
The principles of democracy are based upon the premise that our government is a government of the people, for the people, and by the people. It is based on the principle that the American people exercise their precious right to vote and that the majority vote prevails. And let us not get distracted, here, by the fact that because so many Americans fail to exercise the right to vote that very often it is the will of a plurality rather than of a majority that prevails. The point is that important decisions are supposed be made by American citizens, in a ballot booth, or by our elected representatives in a roll call vote in their respective houses of Congress.
The underlying premise of the Constitution of the United States, which may be the most important political document written in the history of mankind, was to prevent the powerful from usurping the will of the people just because they have the power to do so. The Constitution was meant to protect the American people from despotism under any guise, even in the disguise of elected officials who strive to exert their will when they disagree with a decision that was lawfully and constitutionally determined. Make no mistake; forcing a government shutdown is an act of despotism.
The acts of a single faction of one of our two main political parties in shutting down the federal government, leaving millions of American citizens injured in their wake, is no more appropriate than it would be if our military decided that they do not like how the elected government went about its business. It is just as wrong as it would be if our generals and admirals would use the incredible power of Armed Services of the United States to coerce our elected representatives into giving them the decision that they want.
The issue, today, is not how we feel about the budget, the ACA, or the federal deficit; it is about how we feel about our elected representatives forcing a government shutdown with total disregard for democratic principles.
Imagine a future in which the tactics displayed, today, by a political minority became the accepted way of conducting the business of the people. How long will our right to vote matter in a world in which powerful men and women can disregard the voice of the people and use coercion to get what they want?

Build Strength and Independence Not Weakness and Dependence!

Posted on September 26, 2013 by admin

Whenever I give positive leadership seminars there are a number of recurring questions. One of the most common is “How do I get my people to accept responsibility for getting things done when I can’t be there to watch over them?” I love this question because its answer addresses some of the most common mistakes of managers and supervisors, irrespective of venue.

The answer to this seemingly inevitable questions is, simply, “If you want people to accept responsibility when you are away, teach them to accept responsibility when you are there.”

Many leaders are surprised to learn that they create dependencies as a result of their leadership approach. Our objective as leaders should always be to develop a staff of men and women who are strong and independent rather than weak and dependent. One of the ways to accomplish this objective is to teach and coach rather than to tell and do.

When issues arise in the midst of the game, when the pressure of time is upon us, it is easy for leaders to step in and solve problems and take action. In doing this we have, indeed, resolved the issue but we have, unwittingly, taught the lesson that only managers and supervisors cans solve problems, resolve issues, take action, and make things happen. The result, of course, is that the next time an issue arises, people stop and wait for their manager or supervisor to swoop in with a solution.

What positive leaders do, on the other hand, is teach their people how to solve problems and take action on their own. This can be accomplished only if we have created an environment in which people are expected to take initiative and in which there are minimal fears of making mistakes.

This approach is just another facet of delegating to people. Remember that the absolute best leaders are nearly invisible because they are seldom required to get involved in routine operational problem-solving. This is also one of the reasons why the best leaders are the most creative and innovative. They spend their time looking for opportunities to expand the boundaries of conventional wisdom.

The best leaders also spend significant chunks of their time giving support and feedback to their people. They are committed to the ongoing development of each of their employees. It is amazing how easy it becomes for people to respond positively to constructive feedback and to rise to ever-increasing expectations when they have come to view their supervisor as a coach and mentor rather than as a critic and task master. When people have also been given opportunities to learn new skills, gain new experiences, and are invited to participate routinely in the innovation process, true magic begins to happen.

Powerful positive leaders not only preside over a team of people who accept responsibility on their own but they also have men and women who look relentlessly for continuous improvement opportunities without being asked or prompted. Such expectations and the resulting behavior have become internalized as part of the culture.

One of the other managerial/supervisory behaviors that contribute to creating dependencies is the preservation of one’s own stature as the most skilled, knowledgeable, and competent person in the department.

Most supervisors are promoted, after all, on the basis of their technical competency. As soon as you are appointed to a leadership role, however, the supervisor’s purpose shifts. As a leader, our job is to help each of our people become the most knowledgeable, competent, and productive people of which they are capable. When some of those individual’s have surpassed the competency of their supervisors, then leadership excellence has been achieved.

Remember that, as a leader, your job is not to demonstrate how great you are rather it is to teach your people how great they can be.