Breakthrough Generation

As a member of the Breakthrough Generation, I’ve been thinking a lot about youth and education lately. Michael Shellenberger posted an excerpt from Marc Andreeson last night suggesting that major cultural and technological breakthroughs are the domain of young people who have not solidified into standard modes of thinking.

If this is the generation of teens and twentysomethings who will embrace and promote a new a) mode of politics, b) social contract, c) energy basis for the economy, and d) save the world?, I can’t help but wonder: are we adequately prepared for that which may be demanded of us, the new generation. Are we ready? What will it take to get us there?

Let’s take a moment to lament the state of the American education system. Despite claims like Gregg Easterbrook’s that everything is getting better, including the quality of our schools and the caliber of our students, America continues to fall behind in the global brainpower competition. Writes Ted Fishman in China, Inc., “Competitiveness requires a highly educated workforce. On that score, the news in America is not promising.” He worries about “the decreasing ability of American universities to attract the best and brightest foreign students,” but more ominous, in my mind, is the public school system’s lack of ability to produce competitive or even passably interesting/intelligent college-age students. Fishman describes the public schools as “pretty lousy” and points out:

Of the 1.2 million graduated high school students in 2004 who took ACT’s college admission test, only one in five had scores showing they were ready for college courses in English, math, and science. Only a quarter had scores that predicted they would get a C or higher in their first college biology course. The numbers were slightly better in math, but still dismal, showing that only two in five American high school graduates could earn at least a C in a first-year college-algebra course.

While test scores may not be the most reliable indicator of intelligence, the absence of competency in basic areas is disturbing. And as the Texas Board of Education debates the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, one is inclined to wonder if the process of natural selection will have us fading into the background of human excellence, becoming duller and duller as the brilliant join forces and lead the way into a new (probably Chinese) century.

It is not only the schools we must fault, but also the world into which students must enter. Despite concerns about the deficit of well-educated youth, there is somehow a simultaneous surplus of qualified students. The graduating high school senior is faced with acceptance rates to Ivy League and other top schools in the teens or even single digits, something which is compounded by online technologies such as the Common Application, which make it typical for top students to apply to as many as 10 or 15 schools, and by universities increasing their efforts to attract foreign students. And for the college student or recent college graduate, job offers this summer—due in large part to the recent economic downturn—are few and far between. Kate Murphy reports for the New York Times:

…this year’s graduates reported that they had fewer choices than the class of 2007. “They might have received one or two job offers when last year they might have gotten four of five,” said Al Cotrone, director of career services and student affairs at the University of Michigan School of Business in Ann Arbor. Undergraduates, as well as graduate students, are jumping at any opportunity. “When the economy is like it is, they are accepting what they get as soon as they get it,” he said.

So not only are we not producing enough well-educated citizens, we are not effectively using the ones that we have.

There are two cases to be made for educational reform, and social reform centered around creating a better-educated populace. The first, which I mentioned earlier, is that of maintaining a competitive edge. The United States is lagging, which it cannot afford to do in a world that includes China, whose main problem with schools seems to be poor physical construction and lack of durability in the face of natural disaster. But, as is always the case with China, it has enough sheer force and manpower to keep forging ahead. Nearly all losses are small, proportionally. The recent earthquake in Sichuan province is estimated to have had little or no effect on the Chinese economy. Despite civilian frustration, progress rumbles forward. John Kay predicts that China may be on the cusp of becoming the world’s leader in cultural and technological innovation. “All it would take is a dash of expressive freedom and the joining of Chinese talents with global media companies.”

The second point that should be made is that an educated and informed constituency is necessary for both a functioning democracy and a market economy. Both systems have largely become accepted as the modern and progressive mode of human society, but they really only function if the individuals within them are capable of making intelligent, informed decisions for themselves. Writes John Kay, “The genius of markets is that they are not dependent on the genius of any individual.” True, but markets do count on there being some genius individuals out there somewhere. Obviously, having a well-educated population increases the chances of those individuals’ existence.

There is a fundamental question which we have not yet mentioned, of course, and that has to do with the definition of a “good education.” While the sheer volume of Chinese students means the potential for a few, pivotal geniuses to emerge is greatly increased, China is still largely regarded as a materialist society, facilitating the creation of a brilliant, but materialist, new generation. The United States, on the other hand, is arguably a post-materialist society. This may give us a competitive edge, if we can take advantage of it.

According to Kay, the key to maintaining economic supremacy (or even just staying afloat) is in the development of knowledge-based labor. The currency of a knowledge economy requires more than just a lot of information disseminated through the schools, regardless of how effective the schools are at the task. As Kay points out, “Knowledge workers, the thinking now goes, must possess more than rule-based skills…[for example,] despite years of expensive schooling…many programmers now find that they are defenseless against outsourcing.”

Bridging the gap between pure intellectualism and effective and pragmatic action is the essence of developing a society of post-material thinkers and actors. Given the tremendous, if somewhat abstract, challenges presented to the new generation (from global warming to political reformation), and the strange juxtaposition of simultaneously not enough and yet too many well-educated youth, it seems that we need to be more specific and also more demanding in which we expect from the new generation. Not just to think, nor simply to do, but to act with thoughtful but deliberate intent.

Here, perhaps, lies the niche for all those well-qualified, job-hunting, unfulfilled young hopefuls. A recent post on the youth climate blog, It’s Getting Hot In Here focuses on the trend towards “mid-term actions,” congratulating the youth climate movement—which has formerly been campus-based and built on the college-student elite—for growing up and moving into the real world. This focus on the pragmatic implementation of thorough, intellectually-based ideas is a blueprint for the new society the new generation will create. Ready or not, here we come.