Tag Archives: American Society

Do We have the Will to Bring About Transformative Change: A Message of Hope and a Call to Action!

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We have the power, intelligence, and imagination to envision a better America and we have, in our possession, a new idea about how we can bring that vision to life. It requires that we challenge our assumptions about how we go about doing what is every society’s most important job: preparing our children for the future. Ultimately, the question is: “Do we possess the will to bring about transformative change?”

Public education need not be under attack! Public schools can be successful. Teachers need not flee the profession. Children need not fail. Teaching need not be stressful and frustrating. Learning can be fun. All kids can learn and be excited about learning. Parents can be effective partners with teachers to help their children get the best possible education. The American dream can be real for every child. People need not be poor and do not need to be entrapped in the cycle of poverty and failure, nor do they need to live under a blanket of hopelessness and powerlessness.

There is no requirement that our prisons be full. Black men and women need not be afraid of being shot by the police, white Americans need not feel threatened every time they see a black man in an unexpected place, Hispanics need not face anger and resentment when they speak Spanish to their children—besides, isn’t being bilingual something to which we should all aspire? Immigration need not be considered a threat to prosperity or democracy. Children of immigrants need not be separated from their parents. Children born in America must not be denied citizenship, whatever the status of their parents. Everyone must be free to worship according to their faith. None of the worlds great religions must be singled out for disdain or preference and their worshipers need not be subjected to prejudice.

America can, indeed, be great again, in fact, greater than it has ever been, and we need not be a divided people. The very things that divide us are, in truth, the things that keep the reality of America from matching our vision. Prejudice and bigotry impede rather than enhance the quality of life in America. We need not deprive our citizens of access to healthcare services or see the costs of healthcare become prohibitive. We need not place our environment at risk to have a strong economy or strip away regulations that were established to protect our citizens from abuses from those who would sacrifice our safety and well-being for the sake of profits.

Considering America great again does not depend on restricting the freedom of the press; questioning the integrity of our electoral process; or branding an entire race, ethnic group, or religious faith as unworthy of freedom and justice. Our greatness as a free people is not enhanced by withdrawing from the world community any more than our economy is enriched by protectionism. Like it or not, the future of the United States of America requires interdependency and the same can be said for the future of the world community.

America’s strengths and weakness are a reflection of what the American people have learned rather than a representation of who and what they could be.

All the problems facing American society and threatening the future of our participatory democracy are rooted in the historic ineffectiveness of our system of public education. Neither the interests of American society nor the world community are enhanced by ignorance, illiteracy, innumeracy, gullibility, or closed-mindedness. We need our young people to leave school with solid academic foundations, portfolios of a broad range of skills, and the ability to think exponentially (outside the box) with creativity and imagination. We need them to be able to accept the responsibilities of citizenship. We need for them to provide for themselves and their families, to understand the cogent issues of our time and to participate in their intelligent discourse. Ultimately, we need our young people—all our citizens, in fact—to be able to make thoughtful choices in the face of the extraordinary challenges that await us in balance of this 21st Century.

We cannot have citizens who are so poorly informed about critical issues that they will follow, blindly, high profile dilettantes based on jingoistic platitudes and outdated dogma on whatever side of the political spectrum they reside. We need our people to be sufficiently informed that they can distinguish between real and fake news, the latter of which is poorly disguised propaganda.

We want to create an abundance mentality in which everyone believes they can participate in the American dream because, if we work together, there is enough of everything for everyone. This is an enormous challenge, I know, but it is one that is possible if every American possesses a quality education. There are, indeed, deep prejudices in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans and we cannot legislate an end to bigotry and resentment. What we can do is ensure that all Americans, regardless of their race and/or ethnicity are able to fulfill their responsibilities as citizens, which, in turn, increases the frequency and quality of our interactions with one another. If we live and work in closer proximity with one another our similarities are magnified relative to our differences.

This can be an accurate representation of our society, but it requires that we abandon an obsolete education process that has allowed millions of our children to fail, has driven hundreds of thousands of qualified teachers from the profession, has created extraordinary anguish on the part of a significant percentage of the rest, and has left huge populations of men and women unable to participate in the American dream.

We must replace an education process that is structured like a competition to see who can learn the most the fastest. It is an education process that fails children on both ends of the academic achievement continuum. Children who had the misfortune to start from behind are pushed ahead before they are ready, placing them at an even greater disadvantage when success on subsequent lessons requires the application of knowledge and skills they were not given time to learn. This sets up children for failure, particularly disadvantaged children. A disproportionate percentage of these disadvantaged children are black or other minorities, and kids who come from homes in which English is not the mother tongue.

The incessant repetition of this practice erodes the diligence of educators and conditions them to tolerate some level of failure. It also inures teachers and educators to the tragic consequences with which their students will be forced to deal. Sadly, policy makers and government officials are so far removed from the suffering to which they contribute they are oblivious and learn nothing from it. These powerful men and women have not learned the lessons from “systems thinking” that help us understand how our own behavior contributes to the outcomes that do us harm. (Systems thinkin is a concept introduced by Peter Senge in his book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization (Doubleday, New York, 1990).

At the other end of the performance continuum, high achieving students are asked to slow down and wait for classmates to catch up. This is also tragic because when confronted with boredom and impatience, learning ceases to be fun, leaving hungry young minds to look to social media, video games, and even more harmful diversions for excitement, intellectual stimulation, and mindless distractions. When they get to high school, these students may be diverted into honors or advanced-placement programs but what happened to them in elementary school has diminished their enthusiasm for learning.

One of the dysfunctionalities of our existing education process is that it is brittle and unadaptable thus providing teachers with neither the opportunity nor the authority to differentiate between the divergent needs of their students.

As much as I admire teachers and administrators, only a minute percentage ever see the struggles faced by students, whom they proudly declared ready for graduation, when these young men and women find themselves woefully unprepared for the demands of the workplace, institutions of higher learning, or the military.

Every employer witnesses the tragedy when they turn away young men and women who lack the essential academic foundation and skills required of the jobs for which they have applied. Even those employers that offer remedial instruction to help new hires overcome their functional illiteracy and innumeracy, find these young people unmotivated to learn and unwilling to work hard. Even job candidates with impressive academic credentials are often found to be unmotivated and unimaginative. Employers are mystified when they discover that the “book smarts” of the men and women they recruit do not translate well in work situations. On the other side of the equation, these young people are frustrated to discover that what they have learned does not meet the expectations of their employers.

In many of my blog posts, I have shared stories about the difficulty young men and women have, typically recent high school graduates and second-semester seniors, when striving to pass the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) to qualify for enlistment in the military services. They may have been able to pass a test or meet some other criteria to qualify for a high school diploma but a few months later they are unable to apply what they had been expected to learn to the real-life challenge of achieving enlistment eligibility. When these enlistment candidates fail to achieve the minimum score for enlistment, they can retake the exam a second time, after a thirty-day period; a third time after another thirty-day period; and, a fourth time after an additional six months. Even with the use of study materials, few of these young adults ever achieve a passing score. Cramming for exams does not give one the mastery required to be able to utilize what one needs to know in life; mastery requires that we know it.

[to be continued]

No Quick Fixes or Simpler Times

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One mass shooting after another has our nation reeling in grief and disbelief, prompting people to call out for action. “We need to fix this!” some people shout. “It’s time for action!” others proclaim.

Listen carefully!

There are no quick fixes and there will never be a return to simpler times.

The problems of our nation are fundamental and have evolved over many generations. They are rooted in the deep economic, cultural, sociological, emotional, ecological, and political issues that divide us as a people.

These differences that divide us as a people result from a huge population of Americans who are embittered and angry because the American dream is not and has never been real for the vast majority of their children. It results from black Americans for whom the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s and beyond have not been kept.

These difference also result from a huge population of Americans who are angry and embittered because they are being asked to support millions of dependent Americans whom they view, rightly or wrongly, as unwilling to support themselves. It results from the propensity of so many Americans to feel their prejudices are justified.

These differences have damaged some individuals spiritually and psychologically to the point that they seem compelled to strike out in futile anger at the world and at innocent men, women, and children; with mass shootings having become their fashion of our times

People want to return to simpler times when values were clear; when it was clear who was in charge; when most of us looked alike, at least with the color of our skin; and when the political issues of the day were such that republicans and democrats were able to come together and find solutions with which both sides could live.

Times will never be simpler than they are today and our society will never be less diverse. It is only a matter of a few short decades when white Americans will be a minority population. The combination of our nation’s poor who depend on our government for economic support and the baby-boomer population that is rushing into retirement will place unprecedented pressure on those who work to keep our economy productive.

The complexity of the world marketplace, political jigsaw puzzle, growing world population, and the changing environment are of an unprecedented breadth and scope and will not respond to the policies and ideologies of the 20th Century. We are now in the 21st Century and we have only gotten a glimpse of the changes on the political, economic, social, cultural, and ecological horizon as this 21st Century unfolds before us. What we need are fresh solutions, new and innovative ideas, open minds and imaginations, and a new appreciation that we are all in this together.

No matter how hard we think we are working to find solutions to the issues of this new century nothing we will do can possibly work unless they meet the needs of every single one of us. There can no longer be a “we” and “them,” republicans and democrats, liberals and conservatives, “free-marketers” and socialists. There are just too many of us and every action any of us take, unilaterally, will cause a series of reactions that will reverberate across the sea of our world’s population; not like ripples on a pool rather like a series of tsunamis across the oceans of the planet.

We must start by addressing the fundamental issues of American society within the context of a democracy in which everyone counts or no one counts. It must begin with the way we educate our children.

We can no longer accept an education process that lumps our children together and pushes them along an academic path that expects them all to arrive at the same place at the same time.

We can no longer tolerate and education process that is structured to support the convenience of educators while ignoring the unique needs of a diverse population of our nation’s children.

We can no longer permit an education process that ignores the reality that all young children need a rich and nurturing environment in which their relationships are more important than what we do with them. We must understand that it is only through our relationships with them that we can give them that which is important.

We can no longer ignore the fact that the world-wide-web has made peer influence more powerful than it has ever been at any time in the history of mankind and that has become more powerful than the influence of either family or our schools, working independently. The only hope we have of remaining the most powerful influence in the lives of our children is for families and schools to work together as partners.

We must no longer be willing to forgive educators for sending one class of our nation’s children after another out into the world so inadequately prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship and so poorly equipped to support their families and to compete in the economic marketplace.

Neither can we continue to place the blame for the problems of our systems of public education on the shoulders of the men and women who are asked to teach our children in the midst of an education process that works for neither the teacher nor the child. Our public school teachers are heroes but they must be challenged to break out of their encapsulation and change their paradigms.

However distasteful it may seem to some Americans, we must find an economic solution that can feed, provide power, house, educate, and provide for the health of not only a burgeoning and more diverse population of Americans but also what will soon be the ten or more billions of people on this planet. How are we going to respond to the next great plague that will erupt across the world and devastate a population of people with no immunity to protect them?

I challenge all of you to consider the following as an analogy for every aspect of human life on the planet Earth: “how do we feed ten billion or more people on free-range chickens?”

These problems are too big for there to be any quick fixes and we can only control that which is within our power to control.

For the United States of America, it must begin with the way we educate our children and it must begin in our public schools. Surely it must be as obvious for public school teachers to see that what they are doing is not working as it is obvious that charter schools cannot provide a quality education for our nation’s fifty million children between the ages of 6 and 17 years of age.

I offer an education model that is designed to give our nation’s children what they need so that each and every one of them learns as much as they can as quickly as they are able and in which no level of failure can be tolerated. Our system of public education must not be structured as if it is a competition but rather as a training camp to prepare our children to complete once they leave school and enter society as adults. I urge you to examine my model with an open mind looking for reasons to hope that it might work rather than searching for reasons why it will not.

You will find the model at https://melhawkinsandassociates.com/education-model-white-paper/

I do not suggest that this the only education model that will work. If you don’t like what you read you are challenged to develop a better education model.

What you must not do is think for a single moment that you can fix that which is broken in our society by protests or by hoping that somehow we can legislate a change in the hearts of humanity. What you must not do is think that we can solve our problems by continuing to do what we have done it the past. Where we are today is a function of all that we have done in the past.

I understand how powerless many of us feel but we are powerless for only as long as we work alone. If we want solutions we must latch on to a positive idea and do everything within our power to put wings on that dream.

The only thing that we can do, unilaterally, is to pray that we will be granted the wisdom to find a path to the future that unites us as a people rather than divide us any further than we are already divided. We can pray that we will all rally around a positive idea. The only way to improve the future is to improve the way we prepare our children.

It’s all about the kids!

We Need To Have a Conversation!

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Since I began promoting my education model and reaching out to public school teachers, administrators, and policy makers, I have been baffled by the unwillingness of public school educators to accept responsibility for the failure of so many of their students. Please note that I said responsibility, not blame!

I love teachers and consider teaching to be a noble profession. I want teachers to be successful and to be respected for the vital work they do. I want them to find fulfillment in the art and craft of teaching our nation’s children. For many, however, teaching has become stressful and unfulfilling and too many teachers are leaving the classroom well before retirement.

Sometimes, each of us is required to tell people whom we love the honest truth; the words they need to hear whether or not they want to hear. I want to tell teachers that “what you are doing is not working for all of our nation’s students and it is harming children. Our nation’s children deserve better and so do you.”

In the case of millions of disadvantaged students and/or the non-white, the current education process is doing great harm, often sentencing them to a life of poverty. A life of poverty often means a life of crime, incarceration, and/or an early, violent death. The economic cost of supporting this population of poor, uneducated Americans is enormous and it saps American society of its strength, its spirit, and its shared values. This is unacceptable.

How many of our public school teachers go home every night and feel good about their jobs; how many feel a true sense of accomplishment? There are many schools where teachers do feel good about what they do but there many other schools where the greatest sense of accomplishment a teacher feels is that they have survived the day.

Teachers, principals, and superintendents rarely have an opportunity to see what happens to their students when they leave school and enter the real world. Sure, some students stop in to say hello, but most often these are the students who did well in school. What teachers do not see, up close and personal, is what happens to young people who leave school unprepared for the responsibilities of citizenship, unprepared to compete in the job market, and unable to keep jobs they are fortunate enough to land. What teachers do not see is what happens to their former students, now young men and women, when they find themselves crashing head first into the hard realities of life in the Twenty-first Century.

I wish teachers and administrators could be with me every Thursday evening when I administer the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) to young men and women who want to enlist in the Armed Services. A significant majority of these young people whom I test in Fort Wayne are from high schools throughout Northeast Indiana. There are a few testers who are 11th graders, received a GED, or who dropped out and did not finish school, and also a few who have one or more years of college. A significant majority of the young men and women I test, however, are high school seniors and recent graduates. While I am not authorized by my employer (the Department of Defense) to share official data regarding ASVAB scores, I can provide some anecdotal information that I think tells an important story that public school teachers and administrators need to hear.

The ASVAB is the entrance exam for the Armed Services and is, also, a vocational aptitude assessment used to determine the types of jobs and training for which candidates are most qualified. In addition, the ASVAB is offered in many high schools as a vocational aptitude test to help students plan for their futures, whether or not they are interested in military service.

For enlistment purposes, applicants must earn an “AFQT” score at least a 31 out of a possible 99. The AFQT score is a composite score of 4 of the 10 tests that make up the ASVAB and includes “arithmetic reasoning,” “word knowledge,” “paragraph comprehension,” and “mathematics knowledge.” While 31 is the minimum score for eligibility and is accepted by some of the Services, some Services have a threshold of 45 or, even higher.

In addition to enlistment eligibility, the DOD uses the scores to determine “desirability” for military service. While 31 is the minimum score for enlistment eligibility, the military does not consider someone to be a “desirable” candidate for enlistment unless they score 50 or higher. Only around half of the young men and women who seek to enlist in the Armed Services score well enough to be considered “desirable” candidates. The proportion of candidates who are ineligible for enlistment because they were unable to score 31 or higher is about one quarter of the testing population.

If a young man or woman is not eligible for enlistment and, therefor, are considered unqualified for jobs in the military, for how many civilian jobs will he or she be qualified? Apply that same comparison with respect to being considered “desirable” for enlistment. Most shocking of all is the number of these young men and women who score below 20, or who earn a single digit score. These latter two groups of young Americans, products of our nation’s public schools, are functionally illiterate and innumerate.

Is it any wonder that the education reform movement has been driven by leaders from business and industry? These powerful business men and women who want to reform public education in America are motivated by the difficulty they have in finding qualified candidates for their businesses.

Some educators scoff at this suggestion and I have heard more than a few declare that it is not their job “to train automaton’s for someone’s company.” As a former business executive, I can assure the reader that neither civilian nor military employers are looking for automatons. Employers are looking for young people with a solid academic foundation; a good work ethic; an ability to communicate effectively with co-workers, suppliers, and customers; are able to think creatively and find solutions to problems; and, are willing to show initiative.

What our teachers should do—what they must do—is prepare kids so they will be able to work wherever they want, according to their interests and abilities and so they can participate in their own governance as citizens of a democratic society.

What I would love for public school teachers and administrators to see are the faces of these candidates for enlistment when I hand them their score as they walk out of the testing room. They arrived at the ASVAB test site with high hopes and expectations that they will find a place for themselves in the military. It is a crushing disappointment when they realize that they are unqualified for enlistment.

As a civilian employer, I recall the same crushing disappointment in the faces of applicants when they were denied employment because they could not demonstrate basic proficiency in math and reading.

What kind of life will a young person have if they are virtually illiterate and innumerate, and unemployable at age 20? What is the opportunity cost to our nation when these young people are unable to provide for themselves and their families? What is the cost to society if they end up in our jails and prisons?

Maybe if educators could see the faces of these young people, up close and personal, they would begin to see that what they are doing in their classrooms does not work for a significant percentage of their students. Maybe they would be less likely to boast about improved graduation rates. Maybe they would be willing to step back and truly examine what they do and why, not for the purpose of rebuttal, but in search of a better solution. What they would see by stepping back is that the education process is failing to meet the needs of far too many of their students.

It is not sufficient for public school educators to say there is nothing they can do until society addresses the problem of poverty. Our society has done something to address the issue of poverty. Our government has created a system of public education, we have built schools in every community, and we have hired professional men and women who have been trained as educators, and we have taxed the American people to pay for those schools and teachers. It is not acceptable for teachers to look around at society and say “who, me?” Is there any other profession in American society where it is acceptable to produce unacceptable outcomes, repeatedly, and do nothing about it?

We all need to understand that it is incredibly challenging to teach children who arrive for their first day of school unprepared, unmotivated, and with minimal parental support but that does not make it okay when they fail. Here is my message to public school teachers throughout the U.S.:

It may not be your fault that the education process is not working but it is your responsibility to do something about it. It is not until we accept responsibility for the challenges we face that we begin to acquire the power to overcome those challenges. The best way to stop the attacks and criticism of misguided reformers is for public school educators to come together as a unified group of professionals and shout out, loudly, that what you are being asked to do does not work. It is not until you have made such a declaration that you will be in a position to create an education process that will work for all children and that will also work for you, our children’s teachers.

Please consider the education model I have developed as one way to meet the needs of all children and, also, as a way to restore teaching to the rewarding endeavor you were seeking when you chose to be a teacher.
https://melhawkinsandassociates.com/education-model-white-paper/

If you think you can do a better job, then go for it, but remember, a little bit of tinkering will not work. If we want a solution, we must be willing to create a system that is engineered to meets the needs of children, that will teach them how to be successful, and in which every activity is designed to support teachers and students in the vital work they do. This new solution must be put together with the same diligence and attention to detail as a software application in which every piece of code is written to serve and support the application’s purpose.

Please understand that what you are doing today and the outcomes you are producing will never be satisfactory and will never prepare our nation’s children for the unprecedented challenges of the Twenty-first century. What it will do, however, if you cling to the obsolete process at work in our schools, is assure the success of education reformers who are working hard to shut down public education in America.

CBS 60 Minutes Report Comparing American and German Prisons

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Visiting a prison in Germany, in a recent telecast, CBS 60 Minutes reported the stark differences between American and German prisons and “stark” barely describes the comparison. Even prisoners serving long sentences for violent crimes have an enormous amount of freedom, compared to inmates in American inmates, and reside in comfortable quarters that are closer in comparison to a retreat spa than to an American penitentiary. Some prisoners, CBS 60 Minutes reported, even possess keys to their own cells; if you can even call them cells.

Some notable questions for the piece were, “how do we explain the contrast between American and German prisons?” and “what can we learn from the German penal system?”

My response would be that there is not much we can learn that can be translated into changes in American penitentiaries because the differences in penal systems are nothing more than a reflection of the differences between German and American society.

Americans like to think that we live in the greatest nation on earth but that is more of a long-held assumption than a reality. This is particularly true if you are Black, Muslim, Mexican or other minority. The same can be said if you are poor, of poor health, or are the victim of a gun related crime. The German government, much like many of the other industrial democratic nations of the world, actually takes care of all of its citizens, rather than a privileged few, and it provides a much safer environment, the threat of terrorism notwithstanding.

Racial tension and prejudice permeates American society. German society is much less diverse and while there are certainly racists among the German people, recent incidents like Ferguson and Baltimore are, arguably, much less likely to happen. The German people, probably, are far more charitable to President Obama and his family than “conservative Americans” who view the President as evil.

I have not been to Germany but I would be surprised to learn that one would find the same long lines that we see at community food banks in cities around the U.S. Similarly, the disturbing failure rates among American public school students, particularly on the part of poor and minority children, are not part of the German socio-cultural experience.

One of the other differences in the two societies is the prevalence of guns in the U.S. There is an old but not very funny joke that, in a country like Germany, citizens have a right to healthcare but will find it difficult to get their hands on a gun. In the U.S., we have a right to purchase a firearm, even an assault weapon, but may well find it difficult to get access to or be able to afford healthcare for our families. The freedom to purchase and carry anything from handguns to assault weapons creates a whole different level of violence on American streets.

It would be prudent for Americans to acknowledge that our over-crowded prisons and the violent nature of our inmates are symptoms of jagged rips in the fabric of the great American democracy. They are evidence of an expanding chasm between rich and poor, healthy and sick, white citizens and people of color. This rift between the haves and the have-nots is a source of the deepening resentment some Americans have for others. It is a division that threatens the very principles of democracy. They threaten our ability to work together and to find solutions that work for common good.

If there was ever any doubt of the divisions between us, the emergence of Donald Trump as a legitimate candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination should settle the matter. Donald Trump’s appeal is his pledge to take drastic action in response to some of the problems we face as a society. As we pointed out in a previous blog post, that so many Americans are willing to embrace the authoritarian nature of such a candidate may pose the biggest threat to American democracy, its principles and traditions in our lifetime.

A Call To Action!

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As a result of decisions we have made as a society, since the end of World War II, a society of second class citizens has emerged. These Americans are not full participants in American enterprise. It would be accurate to say that they withdraw far more value than they contribute. Many of these men and women have effectively
disenfranchised themselves and why should we be surprised by this. These are Americans who receive a lousy education from a system of public education that is unable to meet their needs; have little or no access to healthcare to attend to their own medical needs as well as the needs of their families; and, if they are employed at all, they have low paying jobs with no eligibility for benefits and no opportunities for advancement.

This population is like a cancer growing in our body, sapping away our strength and vitality. There is a tipping point at which our nation will begin an irrevocable and unalterable decline.

That there is an equally large and growing population of retirees who are checking out of the game at an age from which they are likely to live another quarter of a century, adds greatly to this burden. It does not matter that these retiring men and women have worked hard for their entire lives to earn their Social Security, Medicare and pensions. These facts do not change the economic dynamics that make this population a burden to the Americans in the middle who must work harder to pay the bills. Fortunately, many of these men and women have invested well and their money is working for us even if they are not. The majority of these Americans, however, are dependent on Social Security and Medicare for their survival.

While both of these populations, on opposite ends of the age/productivity continuum create special challenges it is the first group of Americans about which we must be most immediately concerned.

We can neither continue to support this dependent population nor can we continue to enable their dependency and entitlement mentality. Neither can we ignore them; pretend they will disappear; deport them; or, otherwise rid ourselves of them.

The only answer, therefore, is to bring them back into the game as full functioning and productive members of our team, of American Society. Yes, I understand that this will not be an easy challenge to meet or goal to accomplish. The truth, however, is that if we do not find a way to shrink this population and pull them back into the game as contributing members, they will destroy us. The bottom line, then, is that we have no choice but to find a way to win them over to our side.

We can do this by:
1. Reinventing and re-selling the American Dream, and
2. Giving these Americans men and women realistic hopes that the dream can be real for them or, at least for their children.

We accomplish the first by using our unsurpassed talent for marketing and selling products and services. Only this time, we will be selling an idea in which people can believe and to which they can subscribe.
To achieve the second objective, we must re-invent our systems of education in such a way that we not only offer pertinent subject matter but also teach children how to succeed. We are not talking, here, about incremental reforms rather we are talking about a transformation. We must also transform our healthcare system to one that provides high quality, comprehensive healthcare and prescription drugs to all Americans at a price that we can not only afford but that will save trillions of dollars over the next decade.

Impossible, you say?

Accomplishing these things is not only possible it is imminently doable if only we use our imaginations to think exponentially and open our minds to the reality that anything we can imagine, we can do.

Given the extent to which China, Europe, Japan, India, and other developing nations are challenging our supremacy in the international marketplace, we have not a nanosecond to spare. This is clearly the categorical imperative of our time. We cannot continue to trudge down the dry and dusty paths of political dogma, conventional wisdom, or business as usual. We must demand that our elected representatives cease their paralyzing bickering and begin working together in what is a conflict of historical proportions in which the very survival of our nation and way of life is at risk. Never has our very survival as a nation been at greater risk.

You are urged to take this threat seriously and to make a commitment to change the direction our nation is taking. This blog, THE LEADerThinking Exponentially: Leadership, Education, and the American Dream, is here to serve as a catalyst to get people like you involved and to overcome the inertia that keeps people from doing what they know is right. This blog can support you but it is your leadership that will make a difference.

We will also offer articles on healthcare and education both of which, because of the minimal access to the former and the low quality of the latter, contribute significantly to the disenfranchisement of those whom we describe as virtual second-class citizens. Improving the quality of education and the quality, access, and cost of healthcare provide the best point of attack in bringing back this population of men and women who have lost their faith in the American Dream. We cannot invite them back on the basis of empty promises. We must give them real and demonstrable changes.

My book, Radical Surgery: Reconstructing the American Health Care System, published in 2002, addresses the challenges of healthcare and offers an achievable solution that is the antithesis of socialized medicine and that can save the American people trillions of dollars over the next decade.

My book, The Difference Is You: Power Through Positive Leadership will show the reader how every man and woman can be apply the power of positive leadership to bring about changes in the world in which they live and interact.

My book, Re-Inventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream, scheduled for release in a few weeks, recommends a very specific plan of action to re-invent education and to increase the level of commitment of parents to become partners in the education of their children. Changing these things will bring about dramatic changes in the motivation of our children to learn as much as they are able, as quickly as they can, according to each child’s innate abilities and interests.

My novel, Light and Transient Causes, is a story of just one possibility of what could happen in the U.S. if we are unable to address these issues effectively.

Please join me in this campaign by:
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Remember the words of Jane Goodall:
“The most important thing you can do for the future of the world is to realize that what you do matters.”