I found it interesting that as we are discussing Hispanic Creativity, President Obama would choose to talk about “…out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world”. Not surprising, but certainly interesting. I also thought it was interesting that he would talk about innovation in education. He shared the fact that about ¼ of today students do not even finish high school yet in the next 10 years ½ of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school degree.
The reason I find this so interesting is that at the heart of it Obama’s comments address the future of Hispanics in this country. Today about 22% of kids under the age of 18 are Hispanics. This percentage is expected to continue to grow for the foreseeable future due to the higher percentage of Hispanics in the 5 - 12 Cohort. So roughly ¼ of all the kids that will be impacted by any changes to the current system of education are Hispanics. Also, when President Obama speaks about the failure of the current system i.e. kids not finishing high school, math and science scores below those of many other countries, etc., he is basically talking about how the system is failing our children and the future of the Hispanic community. And by failing the Hispanic community, it is failing the US.
Innovation requires creative minds. It requires that people find creative solutions not just to today’s problems but to tomorrow’s reality. And yes, I will say it once more, we Hispanics are creative problem solvers. So if we are already creative problem solvers, a new system of education that concentrates on improving our kids’ chances of becoming innovators feels to me as a system where our kids can excel. This is especially important since, as I stated on an earlier post, we Hispanics are inheriting a huge responsibility as we become a very large percentage of the labor force in this country.
When the President said “In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lifes. It’s how me make our living” and “That’s what Americans have done for over 200 years. Reinvented ourselves.” I thought “Those statements certainly describe the Hispanic community.” I discussed in my first posting how when our forefathers and even some of us arrived in the US had to work doing things we never did before and we became “experts” due to what could be categorized as on the job training. Engineers became house painters, farmers became plumbers, etc. We reinvented ourselves to meet an immediate challenge and to ensure that our children had a better life. And our children are living a better life. All indicators point to a higher average income for Hispanic families than what we had in the past (those indicators have suffered due to the recession but apples to apples they are still better than before.)
So, why am I writing about this? Because I think we have a great opportunity as creative thinkers to influence what the new system of education can look like and how it can help our children excel in the world of the future; a future that starts right now. Our children cannot wait for the next generation to figure this out. We need to improve today their chances of success in a new world. A world where time frames are a lot more compressed than ever before and where waiting for tomorrow to improve something critical to our competitiveness could put our children and consequently our country behind many other countries perhaps forever.
In South Korea teachers are call “nation builders”. Only Asian wisdom could articulate such a brilliant insight! In the next 5 to 10 years US teachers will be building our nation through our Hispanic kids.
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