Time to sell SAS stock?

(If I had any, that is; all my money's in Vangaurd index funds, so I wouldn't be able to get rid of it even if I wanted to).

It appears that its CEO doesn't quite have a firm grasp on logic:

Countries like China, India, and Korea have invested heavily in education over the last decade. They are now producing more scientists and engineers than we are...

Sounds about right - so he's going to call for us to invest in rigorous math & science programs like they've got in China, India, and Korea, right?

...Today’s generation of kids is the most technology savvy group that this country has ever produced. They are born with an iPod in one hand and a cell phone in another...

...Their world is one of total interactivity. They’re in constant communication with each other, but when they go to school, they are told to leave those “toys” at home. They’re not to be used in school. Instead, the system continues teaching as if these kids belong to the last century, by standing in front of a blackboard.

Ah. In short:

1. America has a shortage of scientists and engineers.
2. China, India, and Korea have a glut of scientists and engineers.
3. Therefore, we need a completely new and revolutionary teaching method to teach math & science, unlike the traditional, content-heavy systems employed by the Chinese, Indians, and Koreans.

Brilliant!

To be fair, he does appear to have some bad inputs which are screwing up his conclusions ("Education has not changed, and that’s a problem. It was a good system when I came through, but today’s kids have changed, and that’s the part that educators are not realizing."), but identifying bad input is a pretty fundamental part of any IT project.



Catherine here, parachuting into Independent George's post --

For months I've been meaning to put up a link to de Havilland Blog's post about Frederick Hess's article on how business people can help education.

I'm glad I didn't get to it, because this is where it belongs.

I think Hess has a second article on this subject....will drop in the link if I find it.

from the article:

Two titans of the new economy—founders of Apple and Dell—clashed at an education conference earlier this year in Texas. Steve Jobs and Michael Dell were discussing technology and school reform when Jobs disturbed the usual pallid comity of these sorts of events. “What is wrong with our schools in this nation,” he said, “is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way. This unionization and lifetime employment of K–12 teachers [are] off-the-charts crazy.”

Jobs elaborated, “What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that, when they came in, they couldn’t get rid of people that they thought weren’t any good? Not really great ones, because if you’re really smart, you go, ‘I can’t win.’”

Dell responded that unions were created because “the employer was treating his employees unfairly and that was not good. So now you have these enterprises where they take good care of their people. The employees won. They do really well and succeed.”

[snip]

The hostility that greeted Jobs’s comments is familiar to business leaders who get serious about school improvement. The education establishment is happy to take corporate America’s money and in-kind support, but is ultimately skeptical of business.

The sense I get is that American businessmen and women, overall, in their many forays into education reform, have operated as boosters, loyalists, and fundraisers.

I'm with Hess. American business needs to change its model, or get out of the way and let people who enjoy political work -- or who don't enjoy political work but can't help themselves, as the case may be -- do their thing.

It's easy to give money when you've got it.

It's hard to go up against entrenched power.