Educational Reform:
In 1880s when Sun Yat-sen was forming his philosophy of Nationalist China he tried to preach to his contemporaries that the secret of Western success does not lie in the advanced weapons but in the value system that focuses on development of human resource to its maximum potential. His view was that focus on human development is the key lesson that China needs to learn from West in order to emerge as a nation equal to other advanced nations in the new world order. Today we need to re-learn this lesson back in America from the father of the nation of China. I intend to chart out key pillars that US education system has to focus on in rebuilding our competitive workforce and emerge as a leading nation in the emerging new world order.

It is a common practice in contemporary America to assume that quality of our public educational system is a result of a single variable of the amount of government spending education. This article intends to dispel this perception and lay out the four key pillars needed in a nation to build a strong education system and world class workforce. These four pillars include (1) Family Values (2) Cultural Values (3) Education policies and (4) Government funding.

Family Values:
Thomas Alva Edison, the most successful and well known inventor of all times, also know as “Wizard of Menlo Park, never graduated from College however deep family value of love of learning and his personal ambitions drove him to learn in the proverbial street lights at night which led him to most successful technology enterprise of his time…a key morale of Edison’s life or many others from Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell and others is that it is the personal desire of learning and doing far exceeds the learning capabilities that any formal school system can inculcate in our next generation.

I believe lack of strong engagement of parents in highlighting the importance of education at home is at the core of declining rates at which American children are pursuing higher education and especially a dramatic decline in percentage of American children pursuing education in mathematics, science and technology — educational pillars necessary for building the competitive workforce of tomorrow. In addition to formal education, today’s working parents have delegated to schools the responsibility of playing educational games with kids at the dinner, doing weekend field trips to zoo, factories and other learning opportunities. The house parties are now controlled by automated iTunes streamed music and MTV reality shows as opposed to education focused board games (remember pictionary?) and math and memory games.

The first and foremost focus of a nation in building a strong educational system needs to start at home with parents actively engaged with their kids in making learning a part of every day life and enforcing the importance of education early in life. No amount of government funding or high quality education system will replace the burning desire and love of learning that can be kindled at home under the loving care and upbringing of parents. Remember that mind is not a vessel to be filled but a light to be kindled and it can only be kindled at home.

2 Cultural Values:
In his 2004 book, World is Flat, Thomas Friedman recites a story about his visit to China and how young teenagers in China were falling over themselves to get into a public speech by Bill Gates; hoping to learn about his experiences as a world renowned technology leader. Friedman noted that the difference between contemporary Chinese and American youths is that for Chinese kids Bill Gates is like Brittany Spears and for American youths Brittany Spears is Brittany Spears!
I thought the above anecdote highlights very well the decline in cultural values on what the society considers important. In the 19th and early 20th century our scientist and business men were the national heroes (Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Neil Arm Strong) but over the last few decades national fascination has shifted to Rap stars and pop stars as the idols that our young people want to follow. More recently these ideals have further gone away from nation building heroes to stars of reality TV shows. It is not a surprise that as our children spend most of the time watching Jersey Shore and Real housewives of New Jersey they dream about becoming Snooki or Mike Sorrentino of Jersey Shore, instead of becoming Edison, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs of tomorrow.

I believe it is the responsibility of the society (media, family, government and school system) to build value system where nation builders (engineers, doctors, businessmen, scientists, teachers and public servants) are revered and idolized. When such value systems decline in a society, the next generation will follows the decline.

As a society we need to build back our fascination with the true heroes that made this nation great, and not let our children be fascinated with people who are only famous for just being famous!

Educational Policies:
Educational policies that adopts learnings from free market systems can be successfully applied to government supported institutions like public education. A simple model of reward for performance can help rebuild our educational system from entitlement based expectation of union workers who are now in charge of educating our children to a merit based system where best teachers and schools are rewarded with higher funding.

There are numerous policies under debate today and I do not intend to comment on all possible policies, however I want to give an example of a sample policy to illustrate how minor changes in funding mechanism can help improve the schools without even increasing a single dollar in educational funding or massively impacting the current benefits or incomes that our current educators receive. Imagine that instead of public schools getting the funding for children they are educating, we assign/attach the funding to the child. Let Parents have the freedom to take their child to any school they like. And as long as child is in a particular school, that school will receive the funding for that child. So if a school is not doing a good job in educating that student, parent has the flexibility of taking that child out of that school and put her in a better school and the associated funding will transfer to the new school.

Above model will create an instant competition for educators, school administrators and teachers to do their best to retain the funding within their institution. While there are numerous administrative and logistical challenges to implement a model described above, the intent of this example is to show that even without exorbitant increase in public funding, we can improve our policies for public funding to nurture merit based educational system as opposed to today’s entitlement based system. I am not against the teacher unions but I am advocating smart policies that will reward competency and disadvantage incompetency.

Government Funding:
As a nation we talk about the government funding as the sole variable in improving the educational system in America. I believe our focus needs to be balanced on all four pillars of building a strong educational system in a nation.
However in addition to a balanced approach to improvements in educational system, it is imperative for any advanced nation to regard its spending on education and basic research and development and core responsibility of the public sector.
Sun Yat-Sen’s insight mentioned at the beginning of this article that the core advantage of Western world is not in their weapons but in their dedication for development of their citizens to their full potential remains true in the second decade of the 21st century as it was true in the late 19th century. Today we need a Sun Yat-Sen of America to recognize that core of nation building is development of its citizens to their highest potential.