The best of 2010 should be a call to action for 2011
By Heather Beaven - 01/04/11 04:03 PM ET
The New Year always brings about a plethora of lists. The previous year’s best and worst laid out for all the world to see. Companies vie for top billing in employee satisfaction and profits. Individuals compete head on for product innovation and revenue. Fortune, Forbes, and Fast Company all have a list. They are meant to be recognition for a job well done but they are even more valuable as a glimpse into the future. Yesterday’s success is tomorrows skill set in demand.
Inc. Magazine puts out their 30 Under 30 list, which is a look at America’s hippest young entrepreneurs and their companies. The bio’s detail how the idea came about, where they got the money, future plans and a bit about the company’s culture. It’s rather inspiring; America’s youngest, brightest, adventurous minds at work. It’s also an alarming look at the crooked, broken path from school to work.
This is the first full generation of Americans who have moved from kindergarten to college without any universal access to vocational skills. It was about sixteen years ago, after all, when school districts started moving “shop” off the main calendar and targeted those classes for certain kids. It was the time of NAFTA, Welfare to Work, School to Career, and the Workforce Investment Act. All of which played a part in encouraging community colleges to shift from technical training in favor of faster, less expensive coursework. It was when we decided that work – back-breaking, sweaty, America-building work - wasn’t good enough for our children.
A generation later, twenty-eight of the thirty hottest young entrepreneurs don’t create, build or manufacture anything. Meanwhile, half our young people (presumably the half who are interested in making stuff) are dropping out of high school and will probably never see their name on any list that will make their mama’s proud.
Twenty-three of the thirty companies are built on providing services. Only a few of them have an actual location. They exist, instead, only in cyberspace. You can exchange coupons with strangers, rent a designer outfit you can’t afford to buy, have someone create a public persona for you, get someone to help you find a job or even put together a stay-cation for your buddies. Americans appear to be very interested in collaboration, convenience and comfort. And they prefer all that to happen with little or no contact with strangers.
In the meantime, our schools are still corralling kids into a bricks and mortar box where they aren’t allowed to work in teams to help each other uncover the best solution to the problem. Moreover, most states still consider a student technologically literate if they know how to use Microsoft Office Suite. To every single one of the thirty hottest companies on the list, that is just laughable. To the twenty-five industrial countries that are out pacing us in education, it is money in the bank.
Everyone on the list was educated at well-respected, hard to get in colleges. No one claimed to be “self made.” They all had help, significant help. As we dive head-long into important conversations about transforming the way we educate young people, we must stop looking at what was or even what is. We must predict what will be if we truly desire to re-build, re-create and re-energize America.
Heather Beaven has worked in workforce development and education for fifteen years. She is the CEO of Jobs for Florida's Graduates, a high school drop-out prevention not-for-profit and was the Democratic nominee in the 7th Congressional District of Florida in 2010.
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