Remarks given by Dr. Rod Paige for the Festival Santa Lucia

Originally Published:
September 29, 2008

Source:
Festival Santa Lucia, Monterrey, Mexico

Dr. Paige was invited to Monterrey, Mexico to participate as one of the keynote speakers during the "International Forum on the Great Challenges in Education, Democracy and Development," which spearheaded the "International Festival of Santa Lucia," which is a month-long celebration in honor of the founding of the City of Monterrey.

The Festival followed the tradition of the "International Forum of Cultures" that was held last year and continued with the guiding principles of UNESCO which are: respect for cultural diversity, sustainable development and peaceful living. Monterrey has also added a fourth principle: the search for knowledge.

Remarks given by Dr. Rod Paige

United States Secretary of Education (2001-2005)

For the Festival Santa Lucia Monterrey, Mexico

Welcome.

It is a great pleasure for me to be here this morning. I have had the opportunity to observe firsthand the extraordinary leadership of Secretary of Education of Nuevo Leon, Reyes Tamez Guerra. Our tenures as secretaries of education overlapped, and over the years we had the occasion to discuss many important issues. I consider him a valued friend and wise colleague. He has been an outstanding leader in education and I am pleased to see that he is making such a strong impact here in the state of Nuevo León. I also want to acknowledge Minister Josefina Vázquez Mota. I have been impressed with the dedication she has brought to the job of secretary and her commitment to improving the educational opportunities for the children of Mexico.

I also wish to acknowledge my colleagues in the education field from throughout Central and South America and other areas of the globe. Your presence here reinforces the notion that we have a collective interest in the educational well being of our citizens. It is with this understanding that I enthusiastically accepted the opportunity to join you here today.

The topic of this conference is very timely; the examination of the relationship between education, democracy and economic development is an extremely critical issue to explore. Speaking as an educator and a former government official, I can attest first hand to the paramount role education plays in the advancement of our society. It underscores all that we attain and can define the place we will hold in a civilized society.

With that in mind, I want to spend a few moments with you talking about some of the lessons we have learned in the United States with our own education system. Because while certain segments of the United States’ education system do quite well, there are an equal number of areas where we are lacking, to the point that it jeopardizes the future economic prosperity of our country. Furthermore, I would like to discuss how those lessons may help guide all of us as we go forward globally to address the economic and educational needs in the world.

Many of us in the United States recognize that our education system needs fundamental reform. Yet, there are also many who believe the status quo is sufficient to meet the needs of the future. Building consensus for reform is critical, but equally important is the reform we put in place. The outcome of that discussion will dictate whether our country and our strategic economic partners will continue to experience an economic vitality that has gotten us to this point today.

But let me be very clear, I do not believe that the United States alone will dictate the future fortunes in this part of the world; in fact, I would be naïve to think so. Each of our countries has a responsibility to promote the economic prosperity of the region.

How our nations individually and collectively address the education demand will have profound impact on the democratic and economic development of our entire region. Our nations and people, our economies and culture are interlinked as never before. So therefore, we must recognize that we, collectively, have a role to play in the prosperity of our people.

From the perspective of the United States, the American education system has historically well served the needs of our nation. America’s economic and cultural strength has its roots in the tens of thousands of towns and communities across the country.

Prior to the 20th century we were primarily an agrarian society with a majority of our population directly or indirectly tied to the family farm. We also had a limited but growing industrial base. Around this, a public education system grew that provided for the education of the children in these local towns and farming communities. It was decentralized, community controlled, and financed primarily through local efforts.

In this system, a small percentage of students had access to and were able to attain the highest levels of education, going on to become leaders of industry, commerce and government. A larger segment attained skills that would sustain a strong middle-class lifestyle; with a third group that were minimally educated and trained sufficiently to man labor-intensive jobs that were the backbone of our economy.

The economy began to transform in the early part of the 20th century away from this local regionalization to businesses and industries that had a national market. Commercial trade was booming across the breadth of the continent. Indeed, over the span of the next hundred years, the face of industry and the labor force necessary to operate that industry dramatically changed.

Just as mechanization and the advent of the assembly line transformed our industrial base from a slow, inefficient system to one of mass production, the factory floor of today is not what it was a few decades ago.

The use of robotics and other technological advances have required factory workers to have an understanding of mathematical principles and an ease in the use of computers that was unfathomable 50 years ago. Farmers, who in the past relied on a simple horse and plow, today, use global positioning satellites to increase crop yields. Workers, who used to construct buildings out of the most basic materials, such as wood and nails, now incorporate cutting edge resources that maximize energy efficiency without sacrificing safety or design. To make this happen, today’s workforce must have skills in areas that have never before been needed in our economy.

These new requirements for a skilled labor force emerged in response to an ever-changing global economy. Today’s economy is interconnected in ways that were unimaginable a few decades ago.

I drive a car, that car is made of thousands of parts, manufactured in plants in the United States, Mexico, Europe or Asia. In the past, the food I ate was grown locally, coming from a farm a hundred miles from the home where I grew up in rural Mississippi. Today, in the wintertime, I may eat grapes from Argentina or enjoy flowers that a few days prior were growing in Australia. In the comfort of my home, I have the pleasure of enjoying a cold beer from Mexico, Japan, Germany, or, frankly, anywhere in the world.

We are all familiar with these trade examples that permeate all aspects of our lives. However, while our economic model has transformed, our education system has hardly changed. In the United States we continued to view education as a local concern, with policy and decisions dictated by the needs of the local community.

This model, while sufficient in the past, no longer fits our complex society. Education must come in line with the needs of a global community and the demands of a 21st century economy. That is why, beginning approximately 20 years ago, a movement was started to increase the educational expectations of all students.

Grounded in a seminal report entitled “A Nation at Risk,” civic, business, and government leaders came together to issue a call to reform our nation’s education system. The alarm was sounded, and over the past two decades a focused effort has been underway within the American education system to guarantee a quality education for all students, and not just a select few.

That struggle continues today, in part pitting an antiquated system built over generations to service an economy that has long since disappeared, against the demands of this 21st century economy. In essence, it is the system of yesterday versus the needs of today.

A major step in the movement to transform our system, and one of which I am particularly proud, was the passage of a federal law in 2001, while I was Secretary of Education, called the No Child Left Behind Law. For the first time in our nations’ history we recognized that it was a national prerogative that all children attain a high quality education, yet balance those needs with the historic importance of decision making at the local level.

This law has three central principles. First, an understanding that the demands of today’s workforce require students to have a basic foundation in the academics of math, science and language arts. Second, this academic foundation should be instilled in all of our children, regardless of economic or racial background. And third, the necessary resources must be directed to achieve this goal.

This law was a critical first step, but it was only a first step. There is still a lot of heavy lifting that needs to take place. But after decades of neglect, we are beginning to realize that in order to meet the needs of a 21st century society, in order to support an expansion of democracy and a continued progress in our economy, we need a 21st century education system.

I am pleased to say that in my travels around the world, both as US Secretary of Education and now as Chairman of the Chartwell Education Group, this emphasis on upgrading the education system is not limited to the United States. It is a phenomenon that is taking place around the world. From the vast plains of the African continent to the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe, from the Pacific Rim to the shadows of the Andean peaks, nations in every corner of the globe are increasing the resources they dedicate to the education of their citizens. For now, more than ever, leaders are realizing that the future prosperity and well-being of all our peoples is rooted in the quality of their education.

One of the driving forces critical to this transformation is the effective use of technology in the learning experience. I could site countless examples of how these transformations are taking place. There are students in my old school district in Houston, Texas, who go online today and interact with students in Shanghai, Mexico City or Helsinki in real-time. In classrooms all around the world students produce their own version of their school newspaper, using the tools found on your basic laptop computer. Today, students from Canada, Uruguay, or South Africa can go on the internet and view an image that was taken a few moments ago on the surface of a planet millions of miles away. More students, in more areas of the globe, have more access to information and knowledge than ever before in history. It is an explosion of learning that can only bode well for our future.

However, there are challenges as well. In the post-secondary area, for example, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of students pursuing higher education. Obviously, this is a welcome development, for it signifies a democratization of something that in the past was reserved for a select few. Yet world-wide, our institutions of higher education struggle to keep up with this increased demand.

Recently, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported that enrollment in postsecondary education is increasing dramatically across virtually all of its member countries. On average, enrollment in postsecondary education programs has increased from 37 percent in 1995 to 57 percent in all OECD member states.

The growing number of students completing a secondary level education will continue to drive up postsecondary enrollment, as will the demands placed on workers in the 21st century. As the global economy becomes predominantly knowledge-based, postsecondary education is becoming more essential for students in all countries.

These realties have created a challenging situation. The struggle to improve enrollment in postsecondary education isn’t a question of commitment, or even necessarily of resources – it is a question of capacity. Demand is simply overwhelming the ability of governments to respond quickly enough to absorb the number of students wishing to pursue postsecondary education. Where many countries have made university level education a priority for national spending initiatives, those initiatives are struggling to provide adequate capacity.

Under these circumstances, governments are increasingly turning to the private sector to provide expanded access to postsecondary education. The expansion of private postsecondary education institutions has provided capacity at little or no cost to governments and in many cases contributes to increased revenue through tax receipts.

This has been an important development in the United States, and I welcome this approach, for leveraging the capacity of the private sector has two advantages. First, limited resources can be used to target programs oriented toward expanding access to the most needy. Means tested programs are by nature less expensive to maintain than universal programs. Government funding for disadvantaged students can provide equal access at a lower cost than a program that makes no distinction based on an individual’s needs.

Second, the private sector has often demonstrated a willingness to provide high quality instruction without reliance on government funding. Several countries in the process of expanding their postsecondary capacity have benefited from aggressive expansion from private postsecondary education providers.

This is not to say that allowing private educational institutions to provide necessary capacity is a solution without challenges as well. By permitting the private sector to enroll students, governments must maintain adequate quality assurance regimes, particularly if students attending private institutions have access to national student financial aid programs. Maintaining a quality assurance program requires commitment and resources, and a sufficient supply of human capital to perform reviews of postsecondary institutions.

As postsecondary enrollment grows worldwide, and capacity is stressed, the private sector will continue to provide access and opportunity for students of all backgrounds.

The growth in post-secondary enrollment is indeed a challenge, but a welcome challenge. It signifies progress that the pursuit and attainment of education is a valued resource that is fundamental to maximize one’s potential in our dynamic society.

This desire to better improve one’s self is not isolated to one people or one nation. It is a global movement. It represents a shared value within all our cultures. Because of the interconnectivity of our cultures and our economies, we are evolving into an increasingly more technologically interdependent society.

At our firm, Chartwell Education Group, I and my colleagues are working with governments and individuals to build and strengthen universities across India, Turkey, the Georgian Republic, Ukraine, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Each presents an exciting and innovative approach to 21st century postsecondary education that will provide a vivid array of new options as well as much needed capacity for global students.

Today in Switzerland, the world’s most expensive science research project is underway. Thousands of physicists from around the globe have joined together in what is called the Large Hadron Collider Project. Representing the greatest minds, and communicating in scores of different languages, but speaking the universal language of learning, these researchers are accelerating atomic particles to nearly the speed of light, crashing them into one another to replicate the universe at its genesis.

From this global experiment, we hope to unlock secrets of the atom that may help transform some of our fundamental theories in science. Aside from the hard science attained in this experiment, the collaboration captures the inherent human drive toward the pursuit of knowledge.

When unleashed and replicated in other areas, this collective pursuit of knowledge will allow us not just to look back to the beginning of time, but also to find cures for those afflictions that have plagued our world, from cancer to poverty.

However, it is not merely for scientific or medical reasons that education plays a critical role in the betterment of our society. Without a knowledgeable and educated citizenry, the democratic principles that we all embrace would be threatened. In fact, in the United States, our history is peppered with examples of how limiting access to education was used as a way for one group of people to control others. With each successive generation, as more and more people tasted the fruits of liberty, the democratization of education became not just important, but necessary to sustain that movement.

Today, we see the same practice underway in many areas of the globe. Inherent in all of humanity is this desire to be free, but freedom is neither easily won nor easily maintained. A free and democratic society requires an informed citizenry, as a knowledgeable citizen is the greatest check on the abuse of power; nothing protects prosperity more than an open mind. It is not a coincidence, in my mind, that the explosion of democracies around the world has coincided with an explosion of access to information and knowledge. Therefore, it is imperative among all of us, that we use every resource available to maximize the educational opportunities of our people.

The challenge for us today is how we build the education systems to meet these realities. What are the core components of a quality education system that will ensure that all children will learn?

First and foremost, an unparalleled commitment on the part of leaders of government and industry, that education is the first priority of a civil society. I have seen time and again token efforts being made by political or business leaders to reform and improve our education system. I have also seen the opposite, where the power of one individual or a small group of individuals drives a community to act. We must rededicate ourselves as leaders in our communities to this cause.

Second, we must demand the highest of expectations for all our students. A child’s family background or geography of birth should not be the sole determinate of the level of education expected of him or her. All children can learn, and students will rise to the level that is expected of them. When we fail to expect the most of them, they will perform to the level of mediocrity. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to expect the most out of them. And they will not fail to achieve.

Third, when the system fails to educate our students, we must not fail to change the system. We must not be afraid to fundamentally restructure how we educate our children. We must not elevate the protection of the system over the purpose of the system. When we do that, as we have often done in my country, we fail not only our children, but we fail the community at large.

Let me review – committed leadership, high expectations, willingness to confront the status quo. All these are critical in order to have a quality education system. However, even with all of these pieces present, there is one area that I believe is most important, and that is the quality of the teacher in the classroom. Our experience and research has shown that the greatest determinant of student success is the ability of the teacher to inspire and inform the student. That ability has the power to help the child overcome any other barriers facing him or her, including poverty. I have been to many schools in America that had all the tools, schools that on the surface appeared to be high quality with modern facilities, updated text-books, integrated technology and strong curriculum. Yet an inferior teacher held back students from achieving their full potential. This is not acceptable in our day and age.

We must not forget that education is first and foremost a human enterprise. And we must, as leaders, dedicate ourselves to ensuring that our resources are allocated to train, attract and retain the brightest minds and most dedicated spirits to our teaching corps. That is why this conference is so important.

As leaders, we have been given an important responsibility and are in a unique position to drive this transformation. Failure to lead will have two major ramifications.

First, we – but more importantly, our students – will remain stuck in a 20th century education system as the economy moves ahead into the digital age. We will be debating the arguments of the last generation while we are losing the minds of the next. And, we will be jeopardizing the economic and democratic gains we have secured.

Second, if we fail to lead we will be forced to react to a situation that is as unpredictable as it is certain. For I note, that the education consumer of the future will be different than the education consumer of the past. There is a transformative evolution underway that is unlike anything that has come before it. It is more profound than the introduction of technology, and will impact every facet of our education system. And that is the changing profile of the parent.

Most of us grew up in an age of limited but sufficient options. We sat in classrooms with desks neatly lined up in rows, text books passed down from year to year and school memories shared with the same group of people over a twelve year experience.

Yet today, our young people in their 20s and early 30s are coming of age in a world with a much richer bounty of choices in life. Today I can go on the internet and purchase a book from millions of titles and have it on my doorstep within two days. I can read about events that are happening anywhere on the globe the moment after they occur. Plus, if I choose, I can share a classroom that is not confined by bricks and mortar, but shared with students in countries that in the past were merely names on a map. And so can our kids. It is in this age that our young parents are raising the next generation of students. Yet our systems are still based on a model that is too rooted in my generation. A system of limited options, built on the model of the past.

We must lead the transformation of our education system to address these new realities, or the support for this most critical of democratic institutions will crumble. If those of us with the ability to influence this journey do not lead, then we will be forced to react to the change that will be thrust upon us. Parents will not stand by and have choices and options in all aspects of their life, except the education of their children.

In conclusion, we have evolved into a world with shared economic, cultural and democratic interests. In the past, ideals and principles could be isolated to one country or region of the world. Today, that is no longer possible. The tide of change cannot be abated. We must take advantage. We must not fail to grasp the power of this movement.

History is a profound teacher. It has shown us the critical role that education has played in securing liberties for all men and women. It is teeming with examples of how knowledge has improved the quality of life for people around the globe. We must learn the lessons of history and commit ourselves to providing the highest quality educational opportunities to all of our citizens. Education is no longer a luxury for the few, but a necessity for all. For it will secure for us and future generations the essential components of our democratic society. Thank you.

Associated Article: Mexican Education Challenges Analyzed

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