These are sobering statistics.
I contrast this absenteeism with the incredible interest in learning that I saw in Shanghai a few weeks back. I frequently saw people on public transport reading tough topics such as calculus, multivariate statistics, microbiology, and even refrigeration engineering. The young people have an insatiable desire to learn and get ahead. As one walks around town, they remind you of the Beaver Cleaver era. Cleanly scrubbed. Neatly dressed. Respectful of elders and polite. Inquisitive about the world around them.
I wonder if American youth know that their behavior may well place the entire American way of life under threat. Complacency and inertia are the two biggest threats that any leading brand needs to guard against.
Perhaps what is missing is the bigger picture. Kids believe that America is streets ahead of elsewhere. America lacks the broad, visionary goals we had as children. When we were kids, the space program was new. We were going to the moon for the first time. City National (i.e., Bank One) had invented the ATM machine, the VISA card, and had all of these ideas of the future), a student could easily write Ma Bell and get all kinds of material on telecommunications and etc. Within a month of Christian Barnard's first human heart transplant, a teacher at Brookhaven (Nichols) conducted a heart transplant on a frog with his students assisting. There was so much incredible stuff going on that you really wanted to learn and take part in all the excitement.
There is every bit as much going on today. Biotechnology, overcoming world water problems, revolutionary developments in information technology and commerce, undersea exploration...but the excitement of this is drowned in the fantasy world we have knitted around our children and allowed them to get lost in. I saw Nichols frog on a shelf in the Brookhaven biology lab a few years ago, covered with dust and neglect, unremembered as a source of pride and national exposure on television. The teacher in the class seemed to be totally unaware of its significance or the story behind it despite a sticker on the jar that noted the achievement.
Apparently, the story of the frog is as unremembered as the culture of learning in maths and sciences that once was so strong in American schools. The truth is that the world has caught up and is surpassing American education. We have not been in the top 30 countries in standardized mathematics testing for more than twenty years now. The conference that I attended in China was about Chinese B-Schools now establishing a global presence. There were 110 USA/European B-Schools there. I was told that applications to MIT were down 30% this year and that the admission rate had gone from 7% to 22%, primarily because of a drop-off in Asian applications.
Warning bells need to be ringing somewhere, now, and perhaps no more than in business boardrooms. Business has a direct interest in what is taking place in our schools. They have skills that can be shared with government and they need to get involved. They also need to examine how their own behavior contributes to the problem, and I don't refer exclusively to the breakdown in ethics one sees in this Enron era.
I saw a program on TV last night on marketing to children. I watched with a sense of being offended as a B-school prof. They interviewed a lot of people including Ralph Nader, who is not my favorite by any stretch. But, I found that the program made some good points. American children have become unable to remember multiplication tables, hooked to calculators, lost in a fantasy world of computer games but unable to focus on reality. They are less likely to see the beauty of the literature and of art or to participate actively in their high school science classes. They look to material goods (computer games, inert entertainment, vicarious experiences through TV) for fulfillment and learning. Many are losing the ability to truly live their lives, to truly have authentic adventures of their own.
None of this means that America is a lost cause. Quality of life is still good. It still has the world's best universities. There are still many good secondary schools and one heck of a lot of good teachers left. There are some signs of new approaches that are working, for instance, I note that the African learning experiment at Brookhaven seems to have removed that school from the list of high absenteeism schools. There is much to be hopeful about, but warning bells need to ring now before that hope is overwhelmed by a culture of inertia and momentum and a false sense of invulerability.
Kids are absent from school because they find its benefits lower than the cost of their time and effort. I hope these stats ring warning bells and that American government and business will rally to get today's youth interested in tomorrow and challenged by what might happen if they don't get their heads into being more competitive.
