Sustainable edges. Returns on capital investment. Trajectories of capability-building. What’s interesting here is that everyone speaks the same language, everyone agrees on the meaning of the terms. There’s a certain country-club quality to it. We’re all members. We understand one another. We understand that the capabilities we should be developing are the capabilities that will “get us ahead.” We understand that Bill Gates is a logical person to talk to about education because billionaire capitalists generally know something about running a successful business, and American education is a business whose products (like General Motors’, say), are substandard, while Singapore’s are kicking ass. We understand that getting ahead of low-wage, high-human-capital communities will allow us “to thrive.”
Unlike most country clubs, alas, this one is anything but exclusive; getting far enough beyond its gates to ask whether that last verb might have another meaning can be difficult. Success means success. To thrive means to thrive. The definitions of “investment,” “accountability,” “value,” “utility” are fixed and immutable; they are what they are. Once you’ve got that down, everything is easy: According to David Brooks (bringing up the back of my Times parade), all we need to do is make a modest investment in “delayed gratification skills.” Young people who can delay gratification can “master the sort of self-control that leads to success”; they “can sit through sometimes boring classes” and “perform rote tasks.” As a result, they tend to “get higher SAT scores,” gain acceptance to better colleges, and have, “on average, better adult outcomes."-Dehumanized, Mark Slouka
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/09/0082640
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