I Just Returned from the Future

I just returned from the future.

In one of the strangest experiences I have had in a while, I lived the future as I read about it! I did not realize it for a while but then it struck me suddenly over dinner—”I am what I’m reading!”

Let me explain.

As I write this I am nearing the end of my annual Think Week (you can read details about Think Week in these two articles: How to Reduce Stress While Getting More Done; and in How To Find Time to Focus, Think, and Work). During my Think Week my primary focus is prayer and reading. On this trip I took several books with me including Humility (Andrew Murray), The Culture Code (Clotaire Rapaille), Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God (John Piper), Derailed (Tim Irwin), Death by Meeting (Patrick Lencioni), and Generous Justice (Tim Keller).

I also took Anywhere: How Global Connectivity is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business (Emily Nagle Green). This is the book I was reading when I realized that I was living the future. I will summarize some of the key points of this book and their implications for our schools in a subsequent post but for now let me simply state the theme of the book;

Within the next ten years the global ubiquitous digital network will connect most of the world’s people, places, information, and things, which will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, teach, and learn.

The author, Emily Green, knows what she is talking about. She is the President and CEO of the Yankee Group—one of the world’s premier research firms on the impact of the global connectivity revolution with operations in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia-Pacific.

One of the most fascinating parts of the book is her description of five consumer segments: Analogs, Technophytes, Digital Shut-ins, Outlet Jockeys, and Actualized Anywheres (AA’s). As I was enjoying my dinner and reading it suddenly dawned on me just how much I was exhibiting the characteristics of the Actualized Anywheres. The short description of AA’s is that they “bring the concept of a ubiquitously connected consumer to life.” This is when it struck me—-I was literally living the future she was describing!

Here is how I know. I wrote down how I was handling my recreational and work related tasks during Think Week. Here is a short list.

• All of my books, newspapers, and magazines are on my iPad. I read, highlight, annotate, and share my reading content electronically.
• I downloaded a book immediately onto my iPad based on a recommendation from the book I was reading at the time.
• I held a video-call with my daughter and grand daughter using FaceTime on my iPhone.
• I sent an email through Facebook to some friends and family. I accepted a connection request with a professional colleague on LinkedIn.
• I used the Yelp application on my iPhone to find restaurants and read reviews before choosing a place to have dinner. I also wrote my own review on Yelp for the benefit of others.
• I used my Garmin GPS to guide me to the restaurant.
• While driving and while dinning, I used an iPhone application called SoundHound to identify and order songs to download. I liked the songs but could not remember the titles. SoundHound solved that problem.
• I used an application called NoteSelf on my iPad to take notes using a stylus, including notes for this blog article. No paper or pen needed.
• I used the Evernote application to send clippings from the books I was reading to my administrative assistant for her to type so that the information could be put into my Endnote program for future reference and citation.
• I used Logos Bible Software on my computer to study and write a devotional for my faculty.
• I used Adobe Acrobat to print the devotional as a PDF. I uploaded it to Box.net (cloud storage and collaboration) so it could be shared with our parents with a hyperlink in an email, and then I emailed it to all school staff using Outlook.
• I used LoseIt on my iPhone to track my calories and my running.
• One of the books I was reading referenced a 2004 NYT article on how Apple Outflanked Sony in music players (this had to do with Disruptive Innovation). I went to the NYT website and downloaded the article.
• I am using my laptop to type this article using Live Writer, which I will then post to my blog using the same program.

Now, before you react with something like “are you crazy?!” let me highlight the key point. I am using mobile devices connected to a global digital network everywhere I go to get things done and to enhance and enrich my life. I have a seminary’s worth of books in my Logos Bible program. I have an entire library on my iPad for reading. I have a huge music library of beautiful music in my pocket. I can find and read reviews on local restaurants before deciding where to eat. And I was able to speak with AND see my granddaughter even though I am hours away in a hotel.

Some of my readers, perhaps many of them, have no intention or interest in using technology in the ways I describe above. That is okay. They are most likely Analogs. Most people are. All of us fall into one of the consumer segments that Emily Green describes in her book.

What does this have to do with our schools? Plenty! What I just described is how most of our younger parents and our students will conduct their personal and professional lives.

As school leaders we must understand that our younger parents (those born in the mid to late seventies) and certainly our current students and our future parents DO CARE. They will live and work much as I have described above. Mobile computing and connectivity will be a given—it will be woven into their lives. Their expectations are, and will increasingly be, that our classrooms and school-to-home communication reflect the realities of the new Anywhere Global Connectively.

This is a sea change. It is as evitable as the sun rising tomorrow.

Are we preparing our school infrastructures for this change? Are we preparing and training our faculty? Are we preparing our students for the new work world of tomorrow? Are we providing a biblical framework for understanding and using technology for God’s glory? Are we modeling the use of technology for our teachers and other administrators?

This is one of my favorite quotes from the book:

New things are an easy target for those who lack imagination … Years ago, no one understood why e-mail was worthwhile. Now, no one thinks twice about it—but they’re busy talking about why Twitter is stupid. Bob Metcalfe

Let’s put our sanctified imaginations to work—let’s travel to the future and then return to our schools to get ready!

U.S. Schools Are Still Ahead—Way Ahead?

Want some good news?  According to the article posted below (Bloomberg Businessweek, January 12, 2011), contrary to what we read in the media, U.S. students and s chools are way ahead of their foreign counterparts.  This article makes essentially the same argument that Yong Zhao makes in his excellent book, Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization. 

These positive assessments of American education contrast sharply with Friedman’s The World is Flat, 2 Million Minutes, statements by Bill Gates, and a host of other reports and books. 

I am going to email Bill Gates and Thomas Friedman to see if they have a reaction to this report.  IF, A BIG IF, I get a response, I’ll let you know.

What do you think?

U.S. Schools Are Still Ahead—Way Ahead

America's alarm about international rankings of students overlooks some critical components of our education system, Vivek Wadhwa says

By Vivek Wadhwa

America has an inferiority complex about its education system. You hear the sirens every year, when the OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) releases its annual test results. Finland, South Korea, and Singapore usually come out on top; we start blaming our K-12 teachers for not teaching enough mathematics and science; we begin worrying about the millions of engineers and scientists China and India graduate.

This year the big surprise was that Shanghai garnered first place in the PISA rankings. Then The Wall Street Journal ran a story on the home page of its website titled "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior." The Journal article claimed that Chinese (and Korean, Indian, etc.) parents raise "stereotypically successful kids"—math whizzes and music prodigies. They do this by not allowing their children to attend sleepovers; have a playdate; be in a school play; complain about not being in a school play; watch TV or play computer games; choose their own extracurricular activities; get any grade less than an A; not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama. The article went on to recount as typical a series of acts that would be considered child abuse in the U.S. (and aren't the norm in India and China).

The Journal article was simply bizarre, yet it is true that education in China and India is very challenging and fiercely competitive. Children are brought up to believe that education is everything, that it will make the difference between success and starvation. So from their early years they work long and hard. Most of their childhood is spent memorizing books on advanced subjects.

American Stereotypes

Meanwhile, the perception is that American children live a relatively easy life and coast their way through school. They don't do any more homework than they have to; they spend an extraordinary amount of time playing games, socializing on the Internet, text-messaging each other; they work part time to pay for their schooling and social habits. And they party. A lot. These stereotypes worry many Americans. They believe the American education system puts the country at a great disadvantage. But this is far from true.

The independence and social skills American children develop give them a huge advantage when they join the workforce. They learn to experiment, challenge norms, and take risks. They can think for themselves, and they can innovate. This is why America remains the world leader in innovation; why Chinese and Indians invest their life savings to send their children to expensive U.S. schools when they can. India and China are changing, and as the next generations of students become like American ones, they too are beginning to innovate. So far, their education systems have held them back.

My research team at Duke looked in depth at the engineering education of China and India. We documented that these countries now graduate four to seven times as many engineers as does the U.S.The quality of these engineers, however, is so poor that most are not fit to work as engineers; their system of rote learning handicaps those who do get jobs, so it takes two to three years for them to achieve the same productivity as fresh American graduates.As a result, significant proportions of China's engineering graduates end up working on factory floors and Indian industry has to spend large sums of money retraining its employees. After four or five years in the workforce, Indians do become innovative and produce, overall, at the same quality as Americans, but they lose a valuable two to three years in their retraining.

Rankings Reconsidered

And then there is the matter of the PISA rankings that supposedly show the U.S. trailing the rest of the world. Hal Salzman, a professor at Rutgers' John J. Heidrich Center for Workforce Development, debunked myths about these in a May 2008 article in Nature magazine. Salzman noted that international tests use different sampling criteria from country to country, so we're not always comparing apples to apples. As well, the tests compare select populations of small countries such as Singapore and Finland, which each have about 5 million people, with the U.S., which has 310 million. These countries achieve the top rankings on the PISA list. Compare these countries to similar-sized U.S. states, however, and you find that some of those states, including Massachusetts (population 6.5 million), produce the top students. Additionally, we're comparing America's diverse population—which includes disadvantaged minorities and unskilled immigrants with little education—with the homogeneous populations of countries like Finland, Japan, and New Zealand.

Much is made of the PISA test scores and rankings, but the international differences are actually quite small. Most of the U.S. ranking lags are not even statistically significant. The U.S. falls in the second rank on some measures and into the first on others. It produces more highest-performing students in science and reading than any other country does; in mathematics, it is second only to Japan. Moreover, one has to ask what the test results actually mean in the real world. Do high PISA rankings make students more likely to invent the next iPad? Google (GOOG)? I don't think so.

Let's keep improving our education system and focus, in particular, on disadvantaged groups. Education is the future of our nation. But let's get over our inferiority complex. America is second to none. Rather than in mastery of facts learned by rote and great numbers of accomplished martinets, its strength lies in the diversity and innovation that arise in an open, creative society.

Wadhwa is a visiting scholar at University of California-Berkeley, senior research associate at Harvard Law School, and director of research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on twitter—@vwadhwa .

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They Are Coming After Your Students and Said So!

Dr. Barrett Mosbacker, PublisherAt a recent Executive Symposium on Distance Education that I attended a public school superintendent, not knowing I was from a private school, said to the group (to paraphrase), "we are developing a robust online program and we fully expect to recapture students from home schooling families and private schools."

I just reread portions of Christensen's excellent book, "Disrupting Class".  I am particularly interested by his analysis of the "Dimensions of Agreement" and the "Tools of Cooperation".  I have attached graphics depicting the concepts.  These are particularly important to me because it can be difficult to get staff to accept change--I find this particularly problematic among conservative Christians, whom by definition, are "conservative."  :-)  In my estimation, moving forward, carefully and thoughtfully, with distance learning programs in imperative but it is not an easy task--the learning curve is steep, creating a feasible business plan is critical, and getting buy in can be tough.  But, Christensen argues, refreshingly, that consensus is not necessarily the goal--cooperation is!  I find that a refreshing approach given the emphasis on consensus building over the last several decades in the management literature.  I was also surprised by his observation that change is most difficult when there is wide agreement on the goals and processes currently in place.  Generally, one would think that this is a good thing. Upon reflection, however, it is easy to see why change in an organization can be very difficult when the organization is in the upper right quadrant of the dimensions of agreement chart.  This means that one of our challenges is to challenge the consensus on the goals and/or processes currently in place, which is all the more difficult when the organization is successful.  In other words, success can actually work against us, as in "good is the enemy of great."  It is what I'm calling the "Hobbit Effect."

In the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbits went merrily about their lives oblivious to the fact that Mordor was rising and threatening them.  Only a few saw the danger and acted.  I wonder if distance learning and charter schools aren't the "Mordors" of Christian education.  While we argue about uniforms, dress codes, and tuition discounts, the public system is installing a robust distance learning infrastructure and charters are multiplying.  Will we wake up in 10 years and wonder what happened to our market?’

Christensen (2008), Disrupting the classroom, p. 187

 

I am so impressed with Christensen's book that I've ordered two more:
The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do

The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth

Can We Keep Up with the Competition?

(Reposted from Goggle Blogger)

We are in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant and non-competitive. If we do, we will lose students.

Historically, our competition has come from free public schools, charter schools, and homeschooling. Our new competition is coming from technology enabled courses offered by public schools, colleges and universities, and virtual schools, including virtual Christian schools. This development is changing the educational landscape and the school market. The current recession is likely to accelerate this change.

Public schools are adopting interactive technology and distance learning (D.L.) at an accelerating pace. Moreover, there is an increasing number of online virtual schools in higher education and in K-12 education. These options make virtually (pun intended) any course available to any student anytime, anywhere. Students and their parents are no longer restricted to brick and mortar traditional schools to have access to high quality fully accredited courses.

The Explosion in Distance Learning

Alabama, not historically known for innovation or high quality education, is leading the nation in connecting every public school in the state to online asynchronous courses and synchronous courses offered through video conferencing and other interactive technologies. Every student in the state now has access to a wide range of courses, including honors and AP courses that have historically been only offered to students in larger schools in wealthier school districts. The image below shows some of the courses offered through Alabama's Access Program.

To view a short news clip from Fox News about the Access program, click here.

As reflected in the Alabama Access Program, distance learning is exploding. According to Drs. Horn and Christensen (authors of Disrupting Class1) of the Harvard Business School, public education enrollments in online classes have skyrocketed from 45,000 in 2000 to roughly 1 million today. It is projected that by 2020 over 50% of high school classes will be available online1.

The Florida Virtual School (FLVS) reflects this explosion in D.L. Founded in 1997, FLVS currently enrolls 63,675 students in grades 6-12. Enrollment is open to public, private, and home school students.

FLVS offers more than 90 courses—including core subjects, world languages, electives, honors, and over 10 Advanced Placement courses. FLVS courses are accepted for credit and are transferable. Florida Virtual School is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and courses are NCAA approved. FLVS also offers AP Exam reviews in April, even for students who did not take the course through FLVS.

Drs. Horn and Christensen outline four reasons why distance learning will continue to grow:

1. Distance learning technologies will keep improving.

2. Distance learning provides the ability of teachers, students, and parents to select right learning pathways for differentiated learning thus customizing the education to the learning preferences and needs of each child.

3. The looming teacher shortage caused by the retirement of baby boomers will propel schools to move to distance learning to gain access to hard to hire teachers in math, science, and other subjects.

4. The cost of distance learning will fall significantly.

Distance Learning Is and Will Disrupt the Traditional Classroom and School

I highly recommend Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Drs. Christensen, Horn, and Johnson. For a good overview, click on the play button below to watch a video podcast interview with the author, which runs approximately four minutes.

The short video below from Harvard Business School provides useful background context to Dr. Christensen's book. A key concept in this video is winning not by doing it better but doing it differently.

The key concepts in the video sound very familiar in our schools.

The Stimulus Plan is to Include $1 Billion for Ed Tech in Public Schools

According to Edweek2, the Obama Administration plans to spend $1 Billion for Ed Tech. The House Democrats' "American Recovery and Reinvestment" plan includes "$1 billion for 21st century classrooms, including computer and science labs and teacher technology training."

The House Democrats' plan overall includes $41 billion to local school districts, including $1 billion made available through the Enhancing Education Through Technology (E2T2) program, which last year was just $263 million. From the House Democrat's proposal:

We will put people to work building 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries to help our kids compete with any worker in the world.

Such developments have the potential to make public schools more competitive with Christian schools.

Competition from an Unexpected Source-Virtual Christian Schools

I can already hear the rejoinder "but we provide a Christian education in a Christian environment. This type of education cannot be replicated by technology."

It is true that neither distance learning nor any other technology can perfectly replicate the experience of community that one finds in a brick and mortar school. Warm human interactions, prayer in the classroom, chapel services, the excitement and lessons learned through athletics and fine arts are life changing and life enriching experiences that can only occur through face-to-face human interaction.

However, it is naive to assume that these rapidly developing technologies do not pose real challenges to our schools--and real opportunities.

The Challenges

1. The number of parents theologically and philosophically committed to Christian education is relatively small. Given the growing shallowness of Christianity in the U.S. and the evangelical church in particular, this number is likely to grow smaller.

As I noted in a previous post, for many parents, the "Christian" in education is not as important as "quality" in education. Many of our parents enroll their children in our schools for reasons other than the development of a biblical worldview, which frankly, most of our parents do not understand because their entire educational experience was secular, not Christian. They may have a Christian heart but most have a secular mind.

Once having experienced the benefits of Christian education, some of our parents come to a deeper understanding of and commitment to the philosophy of Christian education. Most, however, do not start with this understanding and many never acquire it.

Based on formal and informal surveys that I have conducted with parents over the years, I find that parents enroll their children in our schools for the reasons outlined below. Although survey results vary, in general the order provided below reflects the priorities of parents when deciding to enroll their children in a Christian school.

• A sense of security and safety
• Christian atmosphere (meaning good values, nurture, and protection from the "world")
• Academic quality
• Relatively small sizes
• Christian worldview

The essential question for us is "can distance learning replicate the above benefits of Christian education?" I believe that it can--at least partially and most importantly--well-enough for many of our parents. I believe this will become increasingly true for several reasons:

• Younger parents will be much more knowledgeable and comfortable with online learning (many will experience it first hand in college). Online learning will not have the stigma that it does for many of our current parents, administrators, and teachers.

• The notion of community is changing due to social networking sites like Facebook.

• Rising tuition may make Christian education increasingly unattainable for many.

• Technology will continue to improve resulting in enhanced synchronous interaction through high speed embedded video-conferencing technologies like Wimba.

Moreover, it is interesting to reflect upon how many of the reasons cited by parents for enrolling their children in a Christian school can be at least partially met through online classes.

• Security and safety is provided when students are at home with parents taking coursework online.
• Christian students interacting live with a Christian teacher does provide a Christian atmosphere, albeit in a more limited fashion. Moreover, our students view social interactions differently than we typically do. For them, interaction through social networks and other technologies IS social interaction and quite natural. As evidence, all you have to do is watch a group of teenagers together. They spend as much time texting their friends as they do interacting with those directly in front of them.
• Academic quality can be maintained when highly qualified teachers are teaching using interactive asynchronous and synchronous technology such as video-conferencing, chat rooms, Skype and similar programs. In fact, sometimes the quality can be better! It is now possible and relatively inexpensive for students to take online courses from instructors with Masters and Ph.D.'s, e.g., from India. For an example, click here.

To put this into perspective, consider the following information provided by one online provider of tutoring services.

• The small class size speaks for itself.
• A Christian worldview can be taught by using Christian teachers and Christian material. Sitting in a traditional classroom is not necessarily required. For example, Reformed Theological Seminary offers theological degrees through distance learning. As I was researching material for this article I discovered a video that I did not know existed by my own pastor outlining the benefits of distance learning for theological training.

To the extent that parents believe that they can provide their children most of what is available in a traditional Christian school by combining distance learning, homeschooling, and extra-curricular programs through community programs, we run the risk of experiencing enrollment declines. As technology improves, our younger more technology savvy parents may choose options other than the local Christian school. They will make a cost benefit assessment something like this: "I am willing to get 80% of the benefits of a traditional Christian school for 50% of the cost." The graphic below, which I developed for a workshop I recently conducted, illustrates the calculation being made by parents.

This leads to the next development in the market--the Virtual Christian School.

2. There are a growing number of Christian Virtual Schools such as Sevenstar Christian Academy. Schools such as Sevenstar offer online classes taught by Christian teachers, primarily to students of Christian parents. This is a new development that adds another player in the Christian school market.

As an experiment, I did a simple Google search for "Christian school distance learning". Here is what came up (note there are more than 10 pages of search results):

3. The recession is creating significant challenges for our parents. These challenges may affect parents' decisions regarding the enrollment of their children in a Christian school.

• Many of our families will experience job losses for one or both spouses.
• Many families will receive little or no pay increases, some will experience reductions. On the other hand, most of our schools will raise tuition.
• Employers are shifting health insurance premiums to employees and increasing co-pays thus reducing family disposable income.
• Families have lost wealth making paying for college more difficult or impossible. Some parents will decide to forego paying K-12 tuition to save money for college.
• Families are worried about retirement. Some may reallocate tuition to retirement accounts.
• Grandparents may have less disposable income to assist with tuition.
• Many families will focus on reducing debt and saving money.

4. The availability of high quality academic courses through both Christian and public schools, along with the recession, may encourage more parents to homeschool their children.

The Opportunities

Although the explosion in distance learning poses challenges, it also presents a significant opportunity. Consider the potential benefits of D.L. for our schools:

• Distance learning provides a vehicle for extending our school ministries by enabling our schools to offer Christian education to students who do not have access to quality Christian schools or whose parents cannot afford it. Distance learning provides the opportunity to expand the Christian school market in ways hitherto not possible.
• We have the opportunity to form strategic alliances to offer courses to our students that we otherwise could not afford to offer as individuals schools, e.g., Chinese, astronomy, etc.
• A new revenue stream is created by enrolling new students but without the added cost of new facilities and auxiliary services.
• Extending our educational ministry impact to international students along with the opportunity to connect our classrooms with classrooms in other countries thus fostering cross-cultural understanding and deepening our students' interest in world affairs and missions.

These are just a few of the potential benefits of this revolution in technology and learning. The question is "how are we going to respond?" As I see it we have three options:

1. The proverbial ostrich approach--deny the reality of what is already occurring. Adopting a smug, but in my humble opinion misplaced, confidence that D.L. is a fad or at most a niche phenomenon that will not materially affect the educational marketplace or our schools.

2. Adopt a theological superiority complex that in effect relegates distance learning to a sub-Christian status because it lacks the traditional definition of community. I call this the "Christian Luddite Syndrome" or CLS.

3. Prayerfully and creativity determine how we can redeem this new technology for God's glory, the advancement of His kingdom, and for the benefit of our schools and students. In short, we don't have to throw out the baby with the bath water. Whatever the shortcoming of D.L., we can and should work to redeem the technology to make it all that it can be in service to the mission of Christian education.

Can we keep up with our competition and should we care? I believe the answer to both questions is an emphatic YES. We face both a challenge and an opportunity. Our response will determine which it will be for our schools.

An African Proverb provides an insightful summary of where we may find ourselves as Christian schools:

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running.

You Are Invited

I am currently working on a major distance learning initiative that will involved several Christian schools in the U.S. and overseas. If you would like to learn more about this initiative and your possible involvement, please email me (christianschooljournalblog@gmail.com) for more information.

References

1. Christensen, C., Horn, M., and Johnson, C., Disrupting class (2008): How disruptive innovations will change the way the world learns, McGrawHill, p. 91

2. Source: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2009/01/1_billion_for_ed_tech_in_house.html

Technorati Tags: Distance Learning,market,Christian school,Christian education,Technology,Ed Tech,Educational technology,innovation,disruptive technology,disrupting class,educational reform,enrollment

Was Chicken Little Right? Is the Sky Falling?

Although he is cute, I have no desire to be Chicken Little! I do not  believe the sky is falling.

I am convinced, however, that storm clouds have formed on the horizon. Want to see what is in those storm clouds? Watch the first episode of the PBS special, Where We Stand: Echoes of Sputnik and a Call to Action.

Referencing this series, Mr. Thorpe writes in Education Week:

With the presidential candidates focused primarily on issues such as ... the 3E’s—economy, environment, and energy—this program will ask an important question: Why is the fourth E—education—not seen as worthy of equal attention?

It is the one systemic investment that ultimately fuels our success (or failure) in almost every national endeavor ... Most of us would probably agree that there is little evidence schools are doing any worse than they did 10, 20, or even 50 years ago. They are probably doing better, in fact.

But the problem lies—just as it did a half-century ago—not in what we are doing, but in what other countries are doing.

Our challenges involve the degree to which those other countries are investing in human capital, the priorities they set, and the results they are getting.

The United States once led the world in math, science, and other critical subjects, as well as in the number of students going on to higher education. Today we are well down in the pack ...

Let anyone dare to compare our education results with those of Finland, South Korea, or Singapore, for instance, and the excuses rain down.

We have a more diverse country! We try to educate all children! They can do that over there because, because, because.

Finally, he warns:

In today’s “flat world,” the geographical accident of where they are born no longer conveys to the children of the United States the advantage they have had for decades. Other countries have learned from us how important it is to invest in their people.

We give lip service to the cliché that “our children are our future,” but most people do not see a 2nd grader, or even a high school student, as having much to do with determining our future strength ... Few of us really look at Susie’s lack of interest in reading or Jose’s success in math as being either a threat to or the hope for the nation’s future. Yet, that is exactly what they are.

Is the sky falling? Maybe not but there is a storm brewing over the distant horizon. Unfortunately, most Americans are blissfully ignorant of the pending threat posed to our national well-being, to our national security, or to our children's futures.

Too many of us are like the Hobbits in Tolkien's classic, The Lord of the Rings. Danger is brewing in Mordor but like the merry Hobbits, too many of us go about running our schools largely ignorant of the rising danger or are unwilling or "too busy" to provide the leadership that is necessary to realign our schools, our standards, and our curriculum to meet the global challenge.

Everything may seem beautiful and peaceful in the village but the threat is real. By the time we are concerned enough to raise our standards to international levels it may be too little too late for many of our students.

As illustrated by the table below, American students rank very low in international comparisons of science achievement. Click here for the Executive Summary of the 2006 PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) report. As pointed out in the report, the problem of low achievement by U.S. students is not restricted to science.

To put the problem in a more tangible form, consider two typical "man on the street interviews," which add a surreal exclamation point to the threat our nation faces from poor academic achievement.

Why People Think Americans are Stupid

How Much do American's Know about Europe?

If you have not done so already, I strongly recommend that you and your staff read The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. Here is one excerpt from the book to illustrate the international level of educational competition:

India is a country with virtually no natural resources that got very good at doing one thing--mining the brains of its own people ... In 1951, to his enduring credit, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, setup the first of India's seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) in the eastern city of Kharagpur ...

The IITs became islands of excellence by not allowing the general debasement of the Indian system to lower their exacting standards ... You couldn't bribe your way to get into an IIT ... Arguably, it is harder to get into an IIT than into Harvard or the the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...

IIT alumnus Vinrod Khosla, who co-founded Sun Microsystems, said: "When I finished IIT Delhi and went to Carnegie Mellon for my Masters, I thought I was cruising all the way because it was so easy relative to the education I got at IIT." pp. 104-5

So How Should We Respond?

• Don't dismiss the problem or the challenge. It is real and is substantiated by a large body of research.
• Don't assume that Christian schools are academically superior. As I have indicated in previous articles, even if our students score high on nationally normed assessments, we are comparing our students against a low standard relative to international achievement.
• Have your teachers and administrators read The World is Flat and other articles that layout the problem.
• Assess the quality of your teaching staff--are your teachers superior? How do you know? If they are not superior, what do you plan to do about it?
• Substantially increase the level of your professional development activities and accountability.
• Reassess your curriculum--is is broad enough, rigorous enough?
• Leverage technology to deepen and enrich your curriculum and to enhance professional development
• Remember that when grounded in God's word and motivated by His glory and a love others, the pursuit of academic excellence is a holy endeavor!

What say you?

Technorati Tags: Globalization,Excellence,Chinese,Competition,India,technology Integration,flat world,staff development,professional development,international standards,Mordor,Lord of the Rings,Dumb Americans,Man on the street interviews

Economic Crisis, Globalization, our Students, and our Mission (Era of U.S. financial dominance at an end: Germany)

In view of the current financial crisis surrounding the U.S. economy, I sent the following email to my staff. I am sharing this with you in the hope that you may find it of some small value to you or your staff. Barrett Mosbacker

___________________________

September 25, 2008

Dear Staff:

As you know, over the last several years, I have made a point of emphasizing the new realities of the global economy, its impact on our students, and what this means for our teaching and our academic standards. I would encourage you to take a minute to read the Reuters’ article at the end of this email even if economics and finance are not your “thing.”

I am obviously not an economist so I cannot assess the accuracy of every assertion in this article. What seems clear are the following:

1. The world our students are inheriting is vastly different than the world we have known

2. As was noted in the movie 2 Million Minutes, the U.S. no longer enjoys the economic monopoly that was ours after WWII

3. International competition in all sectors of society is increasing rapidly with the rest of the world catching up and poised to surpass the U.S.

4. All of the above adds up to greater economic uncertainly for our students

The question is, what does this mean for us and our students? I would like to suggest the following:

1. We need to remind our students that we are responsible for our decisions but God is sovereign so anxiety is not an appropriate response. Prayer, humility, trust, and obedience are the appropriate response to this or any crisis.

2. We must continue to enhance our ability to give our students a thoughtful, intelligent biblical worldview. Simplistic responses to complex scientific, social, moral, political, and economic issues will not prepare our students to be salt and light in this world. I am reminded of Dr. Machen’s insightful observation:

The missionary movement is the great religious movement of our day. Now it is perfectly true that men must be brought to Christ one by one. There are no laborsaving devices in evangelism. It is all hard work. And yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that all men are equally well prepared to receive the gospel. It is true that the decisive thing is the regenerative power of God. That can overcome all lack of preparation, and the absence of that makes even the best preparation useless. But as a matter of fact God usually exerts that power in connection with certain prior conditions of the human mind, and it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of God, those favorable conditions for the reception of the gospel. False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root. Many would have the seminaries combat error by attacking it as it is taught by its popular exponents. Instead of that they confuse their students with a lot of German names unknown outside the walls of the universities. That method of procedure is based simply upon a profound belief in the pervasiveness of ideas. What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires. In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combated; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassioned debate. So as Christians we should try to mould the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity …

Furthermore, the field of Christianity is the world. The Christian cannot be satisfied so long as any human activity is either opposed to Christianity or out of all connection with Christianity. Christianity must pervade not merely all nations, but also all of human thought. The Christian, therefore, cannot be indifferent to any branch of earnest human endeavor. It must all be brought into some relation to the gospel. It must be studied either in order to be demonstrated as false, or else in order to be made useful in advancing the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom must be advanced not merely extensive but also intensively. The Church must seek to conquer not merely every man for Christ, but also the whole of man. Machen, J. G. (1987). Education, Christianity, and the State. Jefferson, MA: The Trinity Foundation., pg. 50

3. We need to teach our students that the violation of God’s law leads to temporal and eternal loss. Although there are many interrelated causes for the current economic turmoil, it seems clear that materialism and greed are major contributing factors.

On the subject of materialism, did you realize that one of the major sins of Sodom was materialism and failure to care for the less fortunate? I believe this is a sin on Wall Street and Main Street (To whom much is given, much is required).

Eze 16:49-50 Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. (50) They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it.

4. Our students need to be made to understand that the opportunities and relative prosperity of their parents may be much harder to realize in their lives.

5. There will likely be little job security for most.

6. Working hard and learning are not optional. They face global competition for university entrance and jobs and must prepare themselves if they are going to care for themselves and their families and have resources to share with the less fortunate.

7. We must teach our students to think and HOW to learn. Although this can be a cliché, our students will have to be life-long learners.

8. Our teaching must be active and engaging. Students need to master information/skills but they also must learn how to assess, analyze, synthesize, and present information. They have to be problem solvers, not just good test takers.

9. We will continue to develop our understanding and application of 21^st century skills in our classrooms.

Please join me in praying that the Lord will:

· Use current events to spark a reformation in our country.

· Enable us to use current events as an instructional opportunity to develop our students’ sense of justice, charity, and a deeper understanding of economics and other disciplines from a biblical perspective.

· Be particularly merciful to the poor who suffer disproportionately during economic downturns.

Thank you for your commitment to excellence in Christian education—the Lord is using you to impact many lives! Barrett Mosbacker

Technorati Tags: Economics,globalization,Wall Street,Greed,Materialism,Excellence,Worldview

2 Million Minutes

How do our students compare?

Dr. Barrett Mosbacker, PublisherTwo million minutes is roughly four years, the amount of time high school students have to prepare for life. The documentary compares and contrasts the education experiences of six students; two from each of the countries of India, China, and the United States. It includes statistics on the amount of time spent in the classroom, the influence of the student's parents on their decisions to pursue a certain career, and the degree to which those choices impact their free time during their high school years. Robert Compton talked about his documentary film and the education community's response. Video clips are shown."

Technorati Tags: Time,globalization,excellence,international standards,world-class standards,school,China,India