How I’d Change Education
Meet Your Host, Alan Weiss
Alan Weiss is one of those rare people who can say he is a consultant, speaker, and author and mean it.
His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients such as Merck, Hewlett-Packard, GE, Mercedes-Benz, State Street Corporation, Times Mirror Group, The Federal Reserve, The New York Times Corporation, Toyota, and over 500 other leading organizations. He has served on several boards of directors in various capacities.
His prolific publishing includes over 500 articles and 60 books, including his best-seller, Million Dollar Consulting (from McGraw-Hill) now in its 30th year and sixth edition. His newest is Your Legacy is Now: Life is not about a search for meaning but the creation of meaning (Routledge, 2021). His books have been on the curricula at Villanova, Temple University, and the Wharton School of Business, and have been translated into 15 languages.
Show Notes
Primary and secondary
End the “warehousing” of children
Chronology is silly and hundreds of years old
Socialization is important, but not at this cost
Move kids as they learn
Measure learning by outcomes: application, tests, etc.
Stop defaulting to college educations
Prepare for a range of employment opportunities
I sat next to too many duds in college
Teach life skills: civics, account management, do-it-yourself repairs (remember shop and home ec)
Growing tendency to hire competence and not credentials
End the teachers’ unions control of schools
Introduce carrots and sticks for teachers
The Rubber Room in New York City
Albert Shanker’s quote
Randi Weingarten’s $600,000
The customers are the parents and kids, not teachers
Make the job rewarding and also demanding
Recreate school “open houses”
End the mainstreaming of behavioral problems
End the inclusion on non-English speakers
My experience with Tourette’s Syndrome
Teachers have lowest grade point averages and attend the worst academic schools
Former president of URI: People with poor finances and/or grades go to inexpensive and mediocre schools
Get rid of failed progressive nonsense like “new math”
Allow for school choice of all kinds with vouchers
Change school financing
The affluent/tax/attraction/more tax trap
Pool money within the state for equal distribution
Create true equal opportunity with equivalent resources, quality, teaching across the state
Enforce discipline
Assistant principle might go to jail for stopping a female, black student from heading for a fight, she claimed he physically abused her in doing so. She had threatened the fight.
Mandate school officers. Anyone who says that children are fearful of uniforms and police should understand they’d be more fearful of being beaten up or shot at.
Apply common sense and avoid political correctness and the woke
Teachers may not involve themselves with personal, sexual, gender, and similar issues without involving parents, including names kids use, how they dress, and how they want to be addressed.
Teachers’ personal politics, gender beliefs, and religious beliefs are not permitted in the classroom.
Alan Weiss’s The Uncomfortable Truth® is a weekly broadcast from “The Rock Star of Consulting,” Alan Weiss, who holds forth with his best (and often most contrarian) ideas about society, culture, business, and personal growth. His 60+ books in 12 languages, and his travels to, and work in, 50 countries contribute to a fascinating and often belief-challenging 20 minutes that might just change your next 20 years.
Introduction to the show recorded by Connie Dieken
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