If You're Not Paying Attention To Education, Don't Worry. They Are.

Wading into education at this point in time is like walking across quicksand during an earthquake. Nothing seems stable, at least not for very long. There is a growing understanding that education as we know it is changing. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but there is justifiable concern about what it is changing into. The Saul Alinksy tactic tells the change agents to create a crisis that will force the average person to demand that the status quo change. The key is to have a new status quo ready to go. It is therefore important to look past the changes taking place in education to see what system has been laid for us to "fall into" when the current public education system breaks apart. Who is guiding the transformation and where are they taking us?

Clint Richardson who writes the Reality Blog found another major player (besides Gates) in education by following the money. He introduced us to CORE Education and Technology Limited, a global company deeply embedded in the education industry. His post CORE: Making Children Stupider Around the World" is an eye opening examination of this India-based company that is "re-imagining" education for the world. That is not just marketing bravado. Their Annual Financial Report reveals a company that has seen a 50% increase in revenue in just the last year. Their annual revenue is now at $16.9 billion. As Richardson writes, "This is unheard of, except in government (taxpayer) supported corporations which symbiotically thrive together in public private partnerships."

He details their reach into US education by highlighting a few of their press releases:

• CORE to Provide IT Staff Augmentation for Ohio
• CORE Awarded Staffing Contract for Milwaukee PSD
• UMass Selects CORE for IT Staff Augmentation
• CORE ECS Named Dell Partner of the Year
• Obama Highlights Georgia Pre-K – Powered by CORE

And these two earth shaking revelations from their Annual Report:

The impact of CORE’s intervention is significantly huge today, with benefits accruing to more than 35 million students, 60,000 youth, 105,000 teachers, and 88,000 schools worldwide. Having established a strong global presence through 36 offices across the globe, CORE considers its journey to have just begun.

“Ready to create a promising future"

The global agenda of the 21st century is set around economy and trade, with manufacturing shifting from the west to the east, employment landscape would immensely change at both ends. In order to sustain their economic growth, developed as well as developing economies need to intensify their human capital formation. Not surprising then, nations across the world are increasingly investing in education for continued development of their human capital, quantitatively as well as qualitatively…

Richardson takes the reader on a harrowing journey through CORE's AFR showing us that this company in particular has a vision of what the new education landscape should look like and it appears they have the financial wherewithal to make that vision a reality. 

I highly encourage you to read the entire post here.

If all you know is that you don't like the education provided in your local public school and you are simply railing against common core because it appears to be the U.S. government involving itself in local jurisdictions, then you are far behind the learning curve. The changes to education are global, are being orchestrated by transnational corporations who have deep pockets and deep ties to government to help bring their vision to reality. Education is fast becoming merely workforce training for the benefit of the national economy.

“Improving our workforce and ensuring it remains internationally competitive is an issue that calls for national attention and demands gubernatorial leadership...Engaging education, business and government leaders in a dialogue about what governors can do to more closely align common education, universities, community and technical colleges and workforce training providers with future labor demands." Governor Mary Fallin - New President of the National Governors Association. 

CORE is uniquely poised to leverage its established and fast improving domain prowess. In doing so, it would help nations enhance the productive capabilities of their future workforce and create immense value for all its stakeholders over coming decades.” CORE AFR

"Education is a priority in our overall development strategy and its reform must be deepened to support the building of a moderately prosperous society and the reinvigoration of the nation."  Hu Jintao President of China

If you don't have a clear vision of what you want in your local education, don't worry. CORE will provide one for you.

The Elementary Primer Gets a Modern Technological Makeover? At least it does in India.

When our oldest son was diagnosed hearing impaired in the early 90's, my husband and I were excited when the closed caption option was embedded directly into the television and we did not have to rely on an external "black box" for this function. We began using the captioning feature all the time and very rarely do we even turn it off today, even though our son is away at college.

We used the closed captioning in hopes it would "fill in the blank" for those words he could not access auditorially. The educators also thought it would help reinforce written language as it relates to sentence structure. I believe it helped not only our hearing impaired son, but also our younger son. He was raised watching all television programs with the caption on and he became a prodigious reader at an early age. I believed (although I had no proof) one reason he did read so early was the connection of oral language to written language, and it made reading comprehension that much quicker.

I might have been onto something with thinking the captioning helped reading skills. Here is a piece from "Planet Read":

Same Language Subtitling (SLS) is simply the idea of subtitling the lyrics of existing film songs (or music videos) on TV, in the ‘same’ language that they are sung in. Call it Karaoke on Bollywood for mass reading! A deceptively simple innovation, SLS is already delivering regular and inescapable reading practice to 150 million weak-readers in India. “One of the most cost-effective ideas... Such subtitles could be used worldwide to increase literacy and cost almost nothing.” – The New York Times


Check out on the site the speech from Bill Clinton as he gives out the award for the "Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2009". He stated, "Same Language Subtitling doubles the number of functional readers among primary school children". This type of captioning is more advanced than the captioning currently available for regular programming; this educational captioning is highlighted in real time with the spoken word.

This is a common sense approach that parents could use as their children watch television or dvds. Just think of it. It is as the New York Times states: “One of the most cost-effective ideas... Such subtitles could be used worldwide to increase literacy and cost almost nothing.”

It's heartening this group is receiving recognition for providing a service that is cost effective and educationally proven to increase literacy. Try using captioning at home if you have pre-reading children or those struggling with reading. Just keep an eye on the captions when cities such as "Pascagoula" are introduced into the conversation! Sometimes even captioners need spelling tests!