A second-rate power? - education in the United States

Nation's Business, Dec, 1987 by Paul Choquette, Jr.

A Second-Rate Power?

It's time to recognize an unpleasant reality. The United States, for all its economic and military strength, is just a second-rate power when it comes to initiatives in basic education and retraining.

And, as we move toward the 21st century with a declining birth rate and an aging employee population, this second-rate status threatens to undermine our ability to compete in the world marketplace.

The solution will not be found in new government programs. It will be found in the willingness of the private sector to intervene in areas that traditionally have been viewed as the domain of the public sector--areas such as teaching basic skills and designing school curricula that complement industry's personnel needs.

The fundamental problem is not that our literacy skills are slipping. It's that literacy demands are increasing dramatically in a global market. And the key players in this market are the developing countries, where literacy and job training are integral to their national economic strategies.

The stakes are very high. If we are to stay competitive, we cannot allow developing countries to offer both a lower wage and a more skilled, more literate work force than the United States.

Is this an overreaction? Let's look at some examples. In 8th-grade geometry and in 12th-grade algebra and elementary calculus, our average American student's skill level is behind that of students in those grades in Hong Kong. Our students in those 12th-grade courses are just barely ahead of the typical 12th grader in Thailand. That is because these two Asian countries develop their school curricula with the needs of high-technology industries in mind.

Singapore, a country that was having difficulty feeding its people 15 years ago, today has a literacy rate approaching the United States'. The government has developed a comprehensive economic program to attract industry, including the establishment of research institutes to tailor the skills of the work force to the industries being courted.

The lessons from overseas are clear. Other countries are creatively harnessing a power that we in the United States are not: the power of human capital to drive economic growth. To preserve our standard of living in a world where other people are working for one or two dollars an hour, our people are going to have to work smarter.

The logical place for those of us in the private sector to look for solutions is in the mirror. Business must begin to play a more assertive role in shaping the skills of our work force.

One way is for the private sector to establish a mechanism for forecasting its personnel needs and then to transmit that information to the people who design our school curricula at all levels. We need to plug business into curriculum development to ensure that our schools are training today's people for tomorrow's jobs.

Perhaps the most likely players to take on this role are the statewide and regional business associations.

The group that I chair, The New England Council, has recently begun work on establishing such a clearinghouse for our six-state region. The Council, an association of 1,300 firms employing more than 1 million people, will use data from human-resource specialists and strategic planners in the private sector to forecast future manpower needs.

We will then work with the education community to determine what kinds of course offerings and degree programs will prepare students for those jobs.

A second area in which the private sector should take the lead is establishing remedial teaching programs in the workplace. Studies show that 20 to 30 percent of the adults enrolled in jobtraining programs actually need remedial instruction in reading and math. Horror stories abound in which companies have found their on-the-job-training efforts stymied when many workers are unable to read basic manuals and do simple arithmetic.

The business community is ideally positioned to tackle this problem. Through questionnaires or skill surveys, companies could pinpoint employee needs in reading, math and other basic skills. These surveys would obviously have to be packaged in a nonthreatening way and be sensitively handled. Once the needs are identified, employers could then work with our community colleges to offer training in basic skills. Sending employees to community colleges could help remove some of the stigma of remedial education. Employers could also offer incentives to their workers to participate such as time off for course work and bonuses for those who complete the program.

These are just two areas in which the private sector has an opportunity to play a more aggressive role. The choice is ours. We can sit back, mired in our conventional wisdom, and argue that it should not be the job of private industry to set educational policy or to teach people how to read and write.

Or we can deal with reality. And the reality is that the private sector needs a literate, skilled work force in order to be competitive in the world marketplace. It's time for the private sector to take on a larger share of responsibility for that training task.