Musings from Ari's dad

  Obama’s post-election politics  

President Obama’s post-election politics have always raised questions in my mind, as well as for many other people I know who are interested in politics and governance. What gives? Why not put your money where your mouth is? Especially after saying “discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis” I have mulled this issue in my mind for a good year now and could not quite come to any conclusion other than that times of crisis were the best for bold policy moves even though they set in motion a series of both positive and negative changes. As long as the policies themselves were sound, they would move the country in the right direction, and the President should do what is best for the country regardless of political consequences.

But who am I kidding? As much as I support President Obama for his sensible policies for the country, I am being naive in ignoring the political imperative of leaders. So then what is the way forward? I was pleasantly surprised today to read an article that clearly outlines the leadership aspect of politics from a human lens. Mark Lilla, a professor of humanities at Columbia University wrote a beautiful piece in last weekend’s NYT Magazine explaining how the President must carry forward his policy agenda *while* addressing his political imperative. The thesis of that argument is that humans, and hence our politics, are driven by passions. So the president needs to link his policies to what drives people’s passions instead of providing logical explanations that appeal to cool, rational thinking. He must attend to his political imperative but while being mindful that as President, he is responsible for directing the country with implications not just for the next four or eight years, but our lifetime and possibly beyond, given the horizon of national policies.

Mr. President, you can influence the future of an entire nation, and likely many others, during pivotal times that are seeing changes in global order and socio-political compacts. The US must lead, by making right with its people first. Make us competitive while standing by our ideals (free market, human rights, free speech). Bring back jobs by lowering the cost of doing business via universal health care and re-adjusting our expected standard of living. Be bold, link your thoughts and ideas to our passions even if the country is not ready to listen to these truths. Have our people understand that the technological innovation for lifting the lives of people in the world these days is not necessarily going to come from the ultra high-end, cutting-edge basic science and technology research that the US is so good at but from simpler, inexpensive and practical advancements (see here). We will see countries like China and Brazil rivaling the US’s global standing by simply raising the standard of living of large swathes of their population using simpler innovations. If we remain stuck in our business as usual, we will soon have a bankrupt country with a few very rich people, and increasing numbers driven by bankruptcy and joblessness to poverty levels. Tell us how to compete in the world, Mr. President. Even if the truth is difficult to digest at first, it is better than fantasy.

  Education and our future  

I came across this article when reading the paper today: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html

A few spots in the article caught my eye:

“We have to see this as a wake-up call,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an interview on Monday.
“I know skeptics will want to argue with the results, but we consider them to be accurate and reliable, and we have to see them as a challenge to get better,” he added. “The United States came in 23rd or 24th in most subjects. We can quibble, or we can face the brutal truth that we’re being out-educated.”

A wake-up call? The only reason it hits our nerves is because this is the first time our post-WW II global superiority is in question. Only with China’s rise as an economic force and consequent elevated global status has America started to feel threatened. But does it really take a PISA score to understand that we are no longer globally competitive? There are so many aspects of our national political, economic and social norms and incentives that render us uncompetitive in today’s world. We need to clear our heads from the decades of global success and realize that while we were enjoying our success, we have neglected too many aspects of what made our country so successful in the first place: competitive business conditions, a healthy middle class and the appropriate development of competitive human capital. How much more of a threat do we need to feel the need to make real change to work to retain our lead? How long will we keep hearing about the “depth, breadth and size” of our economy when China and other countries will soon provide good enough substitutes for our products? When will we start understanding that access to the best technology will not necessarily bestow the largest economic power especially in a global world where information flows freely and “older” technologies are good enough for many markets in the world? We have to get off the “high tech” drug that the US is on.

Mark Schneider, a commissioner of the Department of Education’s research arm in the George W. Bush administration, who returned from an educational research visit to China on Friday, said he had been skeptical about some PISA results in the past. But Mr. Schneider said he considered the accuracy of these results to be unassailable.
“The technical side of this was well regulated, the sampling was O.K., and there was no evidence of cheating,” he said.
Mr. Schneider, however, noted some factors that may have influenced the outcome.
For one thing, Shanghai is a huge migration hub within China. Students are supposed to return to their home provinces to attend high school, but the Shanghai authorities could increase scores by allowing stellar students to stay in the city, he said. And Shanghai students apparently were told the test was important for China’s image and thus were more motivated to do well, he said.
“Can you imagine the reaction if we told the students of Chicago that the PISA was an important international test and that America’s reputation depended on them performing well?” Mr. Schneider said. “That said, China is taking education very seriously. The work ethic is amazingly strong.”

Sounds like poor rationalization to me. Are we seriously going to attribute such a poor showing to the lack of patriotic zeal? Conversely would patriotic fervor really have propelled us to competitive levels? Education is systemic, and is culturally and socially embedded deep in a country.

Chinese students spend less time than American students on athletics, music and other activities not geared toward success on exams in core subjects. Also, in recent years, teaching has rapidly climbed up the ladder of preferred occupations in China, and salaries have risen. In Shanghai, the authorities have undertaken important curricular reforms, and educators have been given more freedom to experiment.

You reward what you value. In our socio-economic system, you get what you pay for. In a low-income part of the country, state or city? Yeah well sorry you cant afford the best schools. Want the best teachers? Sorry independent schools pay a lot more. Our culture needs to start valuing basic education.

Ever since his organization received the Shanghai test scores last year, Mr. Schleicher said, international testing experts have investigated them to vouch for their accuracy, expecting that they would produce astonishment in many Western countries.
“This is the first time that we have internationally comparable data on learning outcomes in China,” Mr. Schleicher said. “While that’s important, for me the real significance of these results is that they refute the commonly held hypothesis that China just produces rote learning.”
“Large fractions of these students demonstrate their ability to extrapolate from what they know and apply their knowledge very creatively in novel situations,” he said.

We have to shed our stereotypes and understand the import of the fact that significant proportions of the best academics and researchers in the most well-known universities as well as business leaders and entrepreneurs in the US are immigrants. So if their home countries offer just as competitive opportunities, why would they not apply their energies at home? The greatest irony is that this human capital is largely trained in the US.