What Matters? Engagement and Accountability
A friend of ours sent Sheryl a link to Bill Gates: How I’m trying to change the world now from the recent TED Conference, They don’t provide embed code so you’ll have to go watch the video yourself.
The first problem Gates addresses, malaria, is an interesting topic, and well worth watching. The second raises a really compelling series of thoughts. It’s framed around a simple question and asks the question “how do you make a teacher great?“
Listen closely because it’s a call to arms that will make or break our society in the next generation. It’s that important.
We’ve talked a lot about engagement lately. We talk about it in terms of business, personal relationships and social media interaction. There is zero value in the technology. I’ll repeat that, because as a lifelong technology maven, some of you may think you misread me – there is zero value in the technology. None. Value is in engagement.
It doesn’t matter if it’s blog comments, Twitter, Facebook, school, work, family time at home, engaging with those around us is absolutely vital.
The other key factor to our success is accountability. So in the US, we deal with accountability by bailouts, and then tell the CEOs of the failures that because they’ve failed so miserably their companies require rescue that they must deal with a salary cap and a paltry half-million dollars. I know what you’re thinking. Never has the price of failure been so severe. (Note tongue in cheek) Cluetards. We reward failure and cluetards who manipulate the system, yet we punish our children.
Our educational system in the US is a shameful disgrace of wrong incentives, rewarding mediocrity and failure and general apathy toward our children’s future.
That malaise toward educating our children carries forward into our lives for entire generations. We create and sustain am atmosphere of mediocrity by our actions every day.
Lots to think about. Do go watch at least the second segment of Gates video.
Be engaged
Be accountable
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