Tag Archives: leadership

General Posts

Thursday Morning Ramblings

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I only speak for myself and don’t purport to know the motivations and aspirations of the protesters at Wall Street, but if I were among their ranks, the following would be my clearly stated goals of the protest:

I want to live in a nation that respects and rewards a person’s contribution to society fairly and justly.  I would like to earn enough money to pay off my student loan debt, save for retirement, have access to adequate healthcare, and send my children to college, not feel at the end of the month as if I have to choose between food and gas.  I would like to know that my contribution as a professional educator is respected and appreciated, not just by my students and colleagues, but by society as a whole.

I want to live in a nation that holds corporations and CEO’s accountable for moving jobs overseas and hiding billions in profits offshore to avoid paying taxes.  I’d like to see CEO’s punished for bankrupting companies, not compensated with multi-million dollar severance packages.  I want companies to be held accountable if they poison our water supply, make our air unbreathable, taint our children’s toys with lead paint, contaminate our food supply with lethal bacteria, or in any other way recklessly endanger our lives in the name of profit.

I want to live in a nation that once again embraces innovation and ingenuity and doesn’t allow other countries to outpace us in technological advancement.

I want to live in a nation that respects all people who are willing to work full-time, regardless of occupation.  There is dignity and honor in contributing to society, whether that be as white collar, blue collar, or red collar.  All jobs are important, and anyone who is willing to work and be productive should be viewed, not with cynicism and disdain, but with appreciation and admiration.

I want to live in a nation that embraces diversity and respects everyone’s rights to freedom.  Liberty is our birthright, guaranteed by our Constitution, and these freedoms are granted to all citizens of this country regardless of sex, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or any other artificial stratification created to keep us divided and bickering.  We are all American citizens, born with certain unalienable rights.

I want to live in a nation that celebrates and aspires to greatness, not promotes and rewards mediocrity.  Not so long ago, our music, our movies, our books were the best in the world.  Today, we create paper-thin melodies with no soul, recycle worn-out franchises, and cheer poorly written, cliche-riddled narratives.  We have half-baked reality shows rewarding talent-less jackasses and washed up celebrities.  We promote buffoonery and incivility, while creative geniuses play street corners for handouts.

I want to live in the America I was promised as a child, a land of freedom and opportunity, a place where if you built a better mouse-trap, the world would beat a path to your door.  Today, if you build a better mouse-trap, Corporate America and government bureaucracy will trample your aspirations with a myriad of confusing regulations and a maze of overbearing documentation, stifling your innovation in name of preserving the status quo.

Those would be my goals for the protests.

General Posts

Wednesday Morning Ramblings

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There’s a trend in education that scares me even more than the poverty level wages and standardized testing.  That trend has to do with online and mobile classes in which the majority, if not all, course material is exchanged electronically.  Some of my friends have earned online degrees, and I’m not trying to offend them or insult their education.  For some, that system works, but what worries me is what we lose from education when there is limited human interaction between the teacher and students.

Education is about more than the quantifiable data bureaucrats can measure and mull.  In fact, standardized testing is one of the worst measures of education there is, but that’s another debate, not the focus of this entry.  Education, quality education, is not about memorizing data and recalling it in a multiple choice scenario.  Quality education is about learning how to think critically for yourself, how to behave publicly, and how to interact with each other in a civilized manner.  To me, all three are equally important, but with online and mobile education, the last two are hardly an afterthought.

Because the interaction is limited to emails, texts, and chats, the depths of dynamic human communication, most of which is nonverbal, is lost from the system.  Basic public conduct, such as listening intently, is not engaged.  Talking one-on-one, one of the most fundamental aspects of all human behavior, is also left out.  The end result is a populace with under-developed social skills and a general loss of fundamental manners/etiquette.  We are already seeing the effects of this in businesses that rely on teenagers and twenty-somethings for their workforce.  Customer service is abysmal, and simple courtesy is rare.  As education shifts more and more away from human interaction to electronic discourse, human behavior will continue to erode.

I’m not one who believes education is the answer to all of our problems.  There is only so much the system can do to improve what is absent from children and young adults’ home life, but basic human interaction is one area where educators can have an impact.  Unfortunately, in a misguided effort to assimilate with the now prevalent over-dependence on electronics, educators are losing the ability to teach these fundamental and imperative skills.

There is no magic bullet that will solve this crisis, and as someone on the front-lines of education, I know it has reached crisis status.  Until some measure of autonomy is returned to educators and unless we can lessen the dependence on electronic gadgets for every aspect of our lives, we will continue to see worse and worse social skills.  That worries me for our future, for the kind of society we are creating.  Interpersonal communication is the touchstone of nearly every human endeavor, and without it, we will regress into a much more primitive culture.

General Posts

Thursday Morning Ramblings

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The NFL lockout is a pretty good metaphor for where we are as a nation.  While billionaires and millionaires squabble over how to divvy up a $9-10 billion pie, the majority of us are struggling to keep gas in our cars.  It’s shameful to think that we are so far out of balance and so disconnected as a society that we’ve ended up in this situation.  Without us to buy their product, their revenue will dry up, but instead of looking at the bigger picture, both sides are focused on protecting their short-term interests without seeing the long-term ramifications.

To take it a step further, however, the owners seem to have disdain for the players.  In this case, the players are the labor, and currently, Corporate America views labor as a nuisance and an expense, rather than a valuable asset.  Without the players, the owners have nothing to sell, but instead of protecting their product and ensuring quality, ownership seeks to cut benefits, weaken the union, and maximize their profits.  To me, that’s backwards thinking.  The owners should recognize the value these workers add to their companies and maximize profits through the product they sell.  Labor is not disposable, and customers are not guaranteed.

To a degree, I can understand the players’ position.  They put their bodies on the line every day in practice and every game.  They are the ones who fill the seats and generate the revenue, so they want fair compensation for the profits they generate.  However, the fans are the ones buying the tickets, purchasing the merchandise, and watching the games on TV.  Most of us earn a fraction of their salaries despite working jobs that are much more important to the nation as a whole.  While we make hard choices about healthcare and retirement and food, they live lives of luxury and excess.  It’s hard to sympathize with their desire for more when at the end of the month I’m rolling change for lunch money.

This us vs. them mentality between management and labor is truly at the heart of all of our problems as a country.  The divisiveness of this issue permeates every aspect of our society.  Until we heal this rift, our problems will continue to grow.  Until both sides learn that they are really on the same side and are dependent on each other for sustenance, nothing will improve.  Without labor generating their profits, billionaires can’t exist.  Without management making wise, long-term decisions, labor has nothing to do.  And without customers who have both the desire for and the ability to purchase their products, neither side has anything.