An Educated Citizenry

An Educated Citizenry – just how important is that phrase to our country?

By Robert E. Freer, Jr., President of The Free Enterprise Foundation

“The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” Eden Philpotts

“There is one quality that one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants and a burning desire to possess it.” Napoleon Hill

As we push off from shore of the new decade, the stream ahead is even more challenging. Based on the imagination and grit of generations of Americans, we have constructed a complex society, dependent on the flourishing of skills, the perfection of the knowledge and the continuing desire of our people to do better, learn more and provide for our families the surplus from an exchange of our skills in free markets. The more we have prevailed in this invisible-hand inspired society of plenty, the more complex the world has become, and the more competitive as others have caught on to what is possible if you but reward those who work hard.

Critics have suggested that for the past 40 years, America has ceased to keep pace with the world around us and is now on the cusp of being overtaken by hungrier more determined societies. You may recall my column from three years ago that noted, “For every one in a million student in China, there are 1300 just like him. In India there are 1100. The 25% brightest students in China exceed the total population of North America. (That’s 28% for India.) They have more honors students than we have students. China is about to pass the United States as the country with the largest population of English speakers. If we exported all our jobs to China, they could fill all of them and still have a surplus population.” In five minutes, 60 babies will be born in the U.S., 244 in China and 351 in India.

Our recent world wide recession only makes the need to prepare for this determined competition with the same level of seriousness as our competitors. Surely this is not a time to shirk economic reality, yet that is what we are in the midst of doing when we adopt national legislative mandates that cannot be afforded even if we were solvent. Wishing away economic reality won’t do anything but compound our problems. Einstein told us that to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results was insanity. We must be certifiable by now. We are debating raising the national debt by almost a trillion and a half, fully understanding that won’t be enough. At the pace we are going, we will need to add another two trillion dollars, and that assumes we actually have the discipline to accept the Medicare cuts in the Senate passed healthcare bill.

Hitting the snooze button is not going to make it seem better. Five more minutes with our eyes closed will only allow a tsunami of pent up desire in the third world to overwhelm us by its increased competiveness while we languor in denial. Fortunately, to quote my mentor, “We are Americans.” We can right the ship of state and find solutions within ourselves that can pave the way for a brighter tomorrow. Solutions begin with the recognition that we are in trouble. It cannot be business as usual for the foreseeable future.

Our first steps must be to get serious about repairing the glaring deficiencies in the education of the next generation. It is today the one issue that left and right agrees upon. That agreement must translate into longer school days, longer school years, no early out at 15 or 16 and increased educational choices to provide for an assortment of careers that haven’t yet been invented. Our children need to understand that their future clearly depends upon staying through high school, comprehending at least basic math and algebra and being able to speak and write English clearly and correctly.

The NEA and local teachers unions must accept that they will be held accountable for results and must not be obstructionist to trying Charter and other educational formats that have been encouraging in their results. Geoffrey Canada’s Children’s’ Zone Success Academy in Harlem has proved that minority schools do not have to settle for lackluster results and that minority parents thirst just as parents everywhere for the traditional upward mobility provided by a challenging education that will prepare their children for a future that will test them in ways we cannot fully fathom.

The latest Kiplinger Letter has some interesting facts about the world we are entering and our dismal progress to date. About 31 percent of all jobs today require post secondary training, and few students are pursuing the course of study to qualify for today’s jobs. Science and engineering is growing at twice the rate of other employment sectors and regrettably most of the growth in engineering, mathematics, computer sciences, physics and economics doctorates comes from foreign students who take their degrees here and either seek employment in their home country or remain here to take jobs our own graduates are not qualified to pursue.

The situation is not any better for the jobs not requiring advanced degrees. Almost 10 percent of 16-24 year olds do not get a high school degree or GED. 30 percent of our high school students drop out. Here in South Carolina that figure is 50 percent. Too often today’s employers are finding that they cannot find workers who possess even basic skills to operate today’s businesses, and despite the success of schools like Harlem’s Children’s Zone Success Academy, there is a growing racial divide that threatens the promise of our Republic.

Preparation of this next generation for the world they will face is our number one national imperative. Without coming to grips with this existential requirement of our national existence, we have only a bleak prospect of withstanding the wave of competition vocational, social and political that presently laps at our shores but will soon overwhelm us.

Alas, it is not merely a problem of books and application to the course of study. The very real political differences that divide us present the basic question of what we are educating them to be. Will they be self reliant inheritors of our republic allowing those most energetic and inventive to spread greater plenty for even those who are not as productive, or will the growing burdens of communal control limit us to sharing a future of bleak prospects and equality in shared poverty? Success must be achieved by individual effort, in a free society that rewards success and discourages failure. Without struggle from the cocoon, the butterfly cannot fly. Without the habits of self reliance, our society cannot succeed. _._

Copyright © 2010 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr., is president of the Free Enterprise Foundation. He is also a professor at The Citadel and was selected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence and in 2009 to be their first BB&T Visiting Professor in Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership. A regular contributor to the Mercury, Prof. Freer may be reached at Robert.freer@citadel.edu. If you would like him to appear before your group or organization to speak on any of the subjects about which he writes, please contact him at The Citadel. Copies of his earlier columns may be found at The Free Enterprise Foundation

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