I had the opportunity to make the opening remarks at the University Club’s Distinguished Speaker Series presentation on the Future Evolution of Higher Education: What we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong, and how we need to evolve. Moderated by the consummate professional Robert McNeely, Senior Executive Advisor at Union Bank, the panel included Dr. Lynn Reaser, Chief Economist at Point Loma Nazarene University, Dr. Constance Carroll, Chancellor at San Diego Community College District, and Dr. Randolph Ward, County Superintendent of Schools. They are thoughtful, caring, committed educators and each brought amazing perspective to the subject of the future of education. I have my own view.

Without talking about age, just let me say that once upon a time I was an educator, and I taught primarily English and Journalism. I also have taught in higher education from time to time, including one semester at the University of San Diego, my MBA Alma Mater, in their Masters program, and I currently mentor USD MBA students. I care deeply about education and the future of education, and I think you should too, and here’s why.

Children starting primary school this year will be retiring in about 2070. They start out with extraordinary capacities. I am a big fan of Sir Ken Robinson and I once saw him speak. He is an expert on education and particularly creativity, and he contends that all kids have tremendous talents and we squander them. “Kids will take a chance. If they don’t know, they’ll have a go. “ And I can’t help but mention the standout economic value of creativity to Steve Jobs and Apple.

In a TED talk in 2006, Sir Robinson said, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original, and by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They are afraid to be wrong. We run our companies like this, we stigmatize mistakes. We are now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. “ Sir Robinson asserts that we are educating our children out of their creative capacities by focusing on not making mistakes.

“We don’t grow into our capacity to be creative, we grow OUT of it,” he asserted. He proposed that the whole education system is designed “to educate progressively from the waist up, focusing on their heads and slightly to the right side of their heads, and there’s a significant human potential cost to the lack of attention to dance, art and other creative endeavors. When education cuts the budget, those are the first things to go in favor of the more “practical” things.”

Here’s another interesting perspective which I got from the same talk. Jonas Salk said, “In 50 years, if all insects were to disappear all forms of life on earth would end. If all human beings were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life would thrive.” Consider that it is possible we are in our own way and we aren’t maturing very fast as a human race at all!

Personally, I assess senior executives for a living, and one indicator that I look at in my assessment tool of choice, the Harrison Assessment is the paradoxical relationship between a preference for an analytical approach to decision-making and an intuitive one. Highly successful people, the research shows, have a preference for BOTH. Mostly, in almost a thousand experiences, I observe that there is a preference for analytical over intuitive among senior executives. Not good, not bad, just very interesting.

I am particularly aware of the paradoxical relationship between both the need for education and the demands being put on education to pull rabbits out of hats to please many constituents, and that Americans aren’t particularly generous when it comes to their spending on things that don’t directly benefit them. It is my opinion that there is a tendency toward popularity rather than common sense being the driver of how decisions are made in the public sector.

So my empathy is great for the job these educators have. My call to action is that we all muster the courage and commitment to look at any limiting beliefs of decision makers in Sacramento (let’s just tackle California for now), and how their limitations keep Dr. Ward, for instance, from being able to provide the progressive education using technology that would enhance student learning as they come to higher education. Stick your nose into education and look at the product we’re bringing into the workforce. Do NOT stick your head in the sand! What I garnered from the presentation is that Legislators want butts in seats to matter, but the world has moved on. Dr. Ward is a proponent of education that is current and relevant. You should care, and you should ask, and you should vote.