I have a couple scenarios to run through today that are in backwards fashion coming from me. Usually I use a real-world example to explain a business situation, today I will do the opposite. It’s the same message and there’s a lot to learn.
I hope, for your sake, that you are not able to identify too closely with either of the outlined illustrations.
Warehouseing Flaws
Picture this scenario: We own a wood-working business and we are just getting started filling up our warehouse with raw materials. We aren’t really sure what we’re doing, our expertise is woodworking, but we can get through this. So we map our a warehouse and we stuff it full of inventory as soon as possible, we have work to do.
2 months later we come to the realization that we packed out our warehouse completely wrong. We put all of the wood at the back of the warehouse behind all of the tools, nails, and polishes we use on them. We can’t use any of those materials until we have the wood.
Instead of rearranging the warehouse to make more sense, we just leave it as is and ‘work around it’ because we don’t make excuses.
We put and leave the cart before the horse.
This eventually leads to an extreme lack of productivity and we go out of business because we can’t turn products fast enough to keep up with our competitors.
Backdrop
My sister-in-law is a Kindergarten teacher and I’ve been fortunate enough to spend a good deal of time with her over the past 2 months. Our conversations have drifted towards the education system and it’s flaws on more than one occasion.
It saddens me to hear how few resources we provide teachers, how bureaucratic the system is, and how backwards we have come to do things.
She’s told me horror stories of lacking funds, of having programs cut, and of blatant indifference of children’s progress by parents.
I do my best to tell her she’s amazing every chance I get. She’s a better person that me to deal with that struggle every day. When I hear how things work from the inside out, I’m not surprised to find out our country is 17th in the developed world in terms of education.
Education System Flaws
Picture this scenario: My sister-in-law’s school was provided with a new reading initiative from the school district.
Every grade in her school (1st – 5th) was provided with the proper reading initiative that had been set forth… except Kindergarten. So only 1st through 5th grades received the materials for the new initiative, even though nearly every child goes through Kindergarten.
Anybody see the problem here?
KIDS BEGIN READING IN KINDERGARTEN.
They skipped the basics and are sending the kids into 1st grade without any of the essentials to learn to read. Now this was a funding issue, but that shouldn’t make a difference in this backwards scenario. If kids can’t read to begin how, how are they going to improve in 1st grade? We are setting them up for failure and they haven’t even graduated from elementary school.
Contradictions
Yes, I know just yesterday I said, “people are inherently smart” and I still mean that. I also said we don’t give them the opportunity to prove it. And now I’m saying we don’t foster their abilities at an early age.
The ones that want to learn, the ones that want to better themselves after grade school and college, they have more resources today than ever in history. And those are the ones that will use everything at their disposal.
But there is still another segment that needs to be addressed, the segment that only gets a basic education. Our basic education is too basic for our modern society and we need to make improvements. Just like our wealth distribution, our education distribution is highly skewed.
Why don’t we fix them?
But at this point, how could we fix all this? We have fundamental flaws in our education system that can’t be fixed by a policy or some extra money being thrown at it. When we make decisions like the one I just described, we show how little we care about our education systems.
We may not make excuses, but we sure make mistakes, and these are some of them.
In our businesses, we can stop being pig-headed and fix our mistakes. We can take the time to do things right and measure twice so we can cut once. We can also see the fundamental flaws in our decision making and fix the issues where they start, not just give a surface fix.
As for the education system, we are talking about the government here. I have no idea how we would go about making changes like these to improve our education system.
I know I have at least 2 educators as readers, but I would love to hear more from everyone on ways we can improve this. We can support teachers financially through the website below and we can always tell them and show them they’re appreciated any chance we get.
- DonorsChoose.com – Crowd sourcing for teachers
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What sort of improvements to the education system would you like to see? How can we make these happen?
Leave me a comment or connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the education system.
P.S. 6 Days till Christmas!
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