As both a parent of college-age children and a member of a publicly held diversified industrial company (Eaton Corporation) board of directors, I have more than a casual interest in the state of U.S. manufacturing investment and employment. I am struck by the fact that, on the one hand, our country has a nominal unemployment rate of a little over 8%, but a real unemployment rate (which includes those who want to work, but have given up applying for new employment) of over 10%; while, on the other hand, according to a 2011 study conducted by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute, it is highly likely that over 600,000 available manufacturing jobs are going unfilled because of a shortage of skilled workers to fill them.

http://www.themanufacturinginstitute.org/~/media/A07730B2A798437D98501E798C2E13AA/2011_Skills_Gap_Report.pdf

What distresses me when I read a report like this is the dysfunctional direction in which parents of college-age children and the colleges and universities nudge young people.  Given what I know about the exciting and innovative products and services industrial companies like Eaton Corporation (a company led by a once-in-a-generation CEO, Alexander “Sandy” Cutler) provide to the global marketplace, I would jump at the chance to get started in a career in a manufacturing-oriented company.  Moreover, unless I had a passion for a four-year college education, I would seriously consider either a two-year community college degree, or a time-compressed college education (graduating in 3 or 3 ½ years, instead of four).

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Recently, I stumbled on an online article about the Google effort to lobby the State of Nevada to allow self-driving automobiles to be used within the state.  That article is available at the following link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/science/11drive.html?_r=1

A more recent and broader article about self-driving cars was posted on Friday, March 31, 2012.

http://news.yahoo.com/coming-soon-self-driving-cars-120300164.html

If self-driving cars were to be broadly available, they would profoundly affect how society functions today.  There are many obvious consequences from having the ability to acquire and use a self-driving car:

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In the last year, I have become far more involved in the process of improving the quality of education in lower income communities and reducing the achievement gap between the highest and lowest performing communities in Connecticut. To a great degree, those who care about these problems focus on the need to educate young people in the core subjects of reading, writing, and math. Reading comprehension is clearly first among equals with respect to these core subjects.

However, I have become increasingly convinced that we need to redefine the goal from “reading comprehension” to “optimal learning.”  The technologies with which we interact with the world about which we want to learn must drive us to think differently about the learning process.  Additionally, we need to understand what works in engaging people, whether that engagement is designed to focus on learning, healthy behaviors, or responsible financial management.  Thus, the two relevant questions are:

• What causes people to learn most optimally?
• What causes people to be engaged in the optimal learning processes?

Phrased another way: what works best, and what motivates people to engage with what works best?

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On Monday, March 26, 2012, the United States soccer team failed to win a qualifying game against El Salvador and, as a result, will not be able to participate in the 2012 Olympic Games.

On Tuesday, March 28, 2012, on a National Public Radio program, there was a lengthy set of interviews with different U.S. soccer experts.  The general conclusion all of them reached is that the U.S. lags behind other countries because it does not have a sufficiently robust program for identifying great future soccer players early enough and for developing their skills in the most intensive training and competition environment.

This story was most interesting because it compares and contrasts with stories from other sports that grabbed my attention when we decided to develop and film From the Rough.  Those countries that decide to focus on a sport or competitive activity to excel in international competition tend to do far better than those which simply use the talented participants that decide they are interested in competing and make the effort to excel on their own.

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