Some of the business community’s heaviest hitters got together last Friday (June 3) at the state Economic Policy Council’s quarterly meeting, held at FM Global’s research campus in Glocester. Among those attending the meeting were: Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, the EPC board’s co-chairman and a former banker and Cookson America executive; Paul Choquette, the EPC’s co-chairman and the Gilbane Building Company’s CEO; Kip Bergstrom, the EPC’s executive director and FM Global’s CEO Shivan Subramaniam.
The EPC board had invited to this particular meeting state Education Commissioner Peter McWalters, who told the group that students need opportunities to get into Rhode Island businesses so that they can apply what they learn in the classroom to a real world arena.
That’s a lot to ask.
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Businesses – regardless of whether they revolve around making muffins or some specialized thermoplastic – are busy. It’s not necessarily easy to invite someone in to observe and to some degree, take part. But there is something in it for the business. That is, an opportunity to get a real sense for where their potential employee of tomorrow stands today and what kinds of things may need to be done to prepare that individual to succeed.
The EPC’s quarterly meetings are busy. That a discussion of the importance of our education system dominated the agenda of the latest one, however, should come as no surprise. This is a topic very much on the minds of business leaders throughout the state.
Just a year ago, during the Business Expo 2004, I moderated a panel discussion that carried the title “The State of Manufacturing.” I had expected the discussion to focus on outsourcing and the bleeding of jobs overseas. But it turned into a deeply impassioned discussion of our education system, highlighted by concerns that it was not preparing students for the jobs that await them.
Bob Leach, at that time a senior vice president for the Lumirror Division of Toray Plastics in Quonset Point, talked about how it really wasn’t that difficult to fill an opening for an engineer.
The nearby University of Rhode Island, he said, provided fertile ground for such candidates.
But filling more basic, an entry-level position was a different story, entirely. It was not uncommon, said Leach, for the company to interview more than 20 individuals to find one with the basic reading and math skills to fill an entry-level opening. And the nodding heads sitting next to him suggested that such a scenario was more the rule than the exception.
One of the other panelists, George deTarnowski, executive director of the Central Rhode Island Development Corporation, said something then that is worth repeating now.
“Education has been dumbed down and it has been going on for 50 or 60 years,” he said. “We’ve dumbed down our curriculum and now we are losing our edge. But this is a cultural problem. We have parents who don’t take charge of their kids.”
That’s a scary point to ponder. Maybe because a problem that deep will not be easy to remedy.
So it is at least encouraging that the EPC board recognizes that if businesses want qualified workers, they have to become active players in the education process.
The upshot of the June 3 EPC meeting is that the board has decided to form a subcommittee that will focus specifically on education issues. The governor has asked that it update the full EPC board at its quarterly meetings on how the business community is working to improve the state’s education system.
McWalters should be commended for having obviously left an impression on the EPC board. But what they talked about, you already know. There are too many students graduating from our high schools – and sadly, our colleges – without basic reading and writing and math skills.
So you’ve got to get involved. There are plenty of avenues. Find out where the nearest school-to-career program is in your area. Call your local school superintendent’s office — or maybe the principal’s office at your local high school. Tell them you want to help. Tell them that you might have some ideas as to what they should be teaching their kids.
Yes, you are busy. This is a lot to ask. But the alternative — the status quo — could do real harm to your business.
