Quality Education: The best legacy

A recently published book, Arise, Be All You Can Be, by Josephine Dee recounted a most paradigm-shifting story about a father and his young son. The father was busy in his study. His little boy was with him. Not wanting any distraction from the son, he picked up some paper which had the map of the world on it. On the reverse side of the paper was the picture of a man. The father tore the paper several times and gave it to the young lad, and asked him to rearrange the puzzle. He reasoned that the task would keep the young boy busy while he concentrated on his work.

To his amazement, the boy in no time solved the puzzle. “How did you solve it so quickly?” the father wanted to know. “I did not trouble myself about the map of the world. I figured that if I fix the man, his world would be alright,” the young lad replied his puzzled father. Message: Fix the man, and his world would be alright! His world; be it school, career, family, marriage, name it.

Therefore it is the role of every parent to create the necessary conditions, and the environment for his child to excel in school. There is no school yet which relieves parents of this primary and fundamental duty. It cannot be outsourced. It cannot be delegated. We as parents need to pay as much attention to the habits children are developing as to the grades on their report card. Much more than grades, the habits they develop now will determine their future, for good or ill.

Former U.S. President, Bill Clinton made a statement that it is not about the best school, it’s the parent.

This reminds one of the powerful inspiration provided by the life of Dr. Ben Carson, perhaps one of the world’s best neurosurgeons. Ben was a poor, black American kid, growing up in a tough neighborhood, with a barely literate single mother. He was the dullest boy in his fifth grade class. Yet, young Ben went on to medical school, and is today one of the world’s most celebrated neurosurgeons, at age 33, the chief pediatric neurosurgeon at John Hopkins, reputed to be one of the world’s best hospitals.    

According to Dr. Carson, “I didn’t begin in the top of my class, however, in my first year of medical school my work was only average. That’s when I learnt the importance of truly in-depth learning. I used to go to lectures without getting much from them. For me it paid to thoroughly study the textbooks for each course. Normally, I got out of bed around 6:00am and would go over and over the textbooks until I knew every concept and detail in them. All through my second year, I did little else but study from time I awakened until 11:00 at night.”

Thomas Friedman, celebrated author of bestseller: The world is Flat says “Give me a kid with a passion to learn and curiosity to discover and I will take him or her over a less passionate kid with high IQ……nobody works harder than a curious kid.”

While Bill Gates was a student at Harvard, he spent a lot of time using the school's computers. He wasn’t flippant with school. His SAT score was 1590 out of 1600 before gaining entrance to Harvard. It was because he needed to develop his ideas that he dropped out of school to join Paul Allen at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. The following year saw the release of the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw this as the opportunity to start their own computer software company. He had talked this decision over with his parents, who were supportive of him after seeing how much Gates wanted to start a company.

Education is the Key to Innovation

The biggest obstacle to innovation is lack of high-quality education. According to Tony from Wisconsin:

Education is the key to innovation and manufacturing superiority. We must prepare all age groups…for the challenges this year and this decade.

The President couldn’t agree with him more. In fact, President Obama spoke about it at Parkville Middle School outside of Baltimore. In his FY2012 Budget proposal, the President has called for critical investments in our children’s future – like training 100,000 new math and science teachers over the next ten years, expanding the Race to the Top education reform initiative, and making college more affordable for America’s students and families by helping 9 million students through the Pell grant program and permanently extending the American Opportunity Tax Credit that provides up to $10,000 of tuition tax credits over four years.

It’s about time, all stakeholders in the educational system, parents and the government put education in the right perspective by giving it the priority that it deserves.