Over the long weekend I read an article in the NY Times about colleges being afraid of higher education rankings by the federal government.
If I were in the education business at the college level, I would be too.
But I am not here to bash colleges or the education system for that matter…it isn’t productive.
I do think that we can learn a lesson from the feelings that this kind of fear brings about what we should be educating our kids and citizens for…
* Focus on results…too much of our time is spent on tasks and not on what we want to achieve. I’m a big believer in the idea that you gain much more in learning what you need to do to achieve something that you do by the theory alone, but, unfortunately, our education system seems to be too heavily skewed towards rewarding activities and not results.
* Proficiency at making decisions…I hear about helicopter parents and I don’t know if it is overstated or not, but what I do know is that we should really be encouraging people to learn how to make decisions and how to use judgment to make better decisions.
* Goal Setting…I don’t mean this in the self help context, but I mean this in the way that you set goals that you want to achieve to drive your performance. Say you want to get a college degree, that’s a goal and there are steps you need to take. The same goes for wanting to build a business or get elected to office. You need to be able to set a goal so that you can understand what you are going to need to do to get there.
These are just three, but this article and the fear it produced got me think gin..what about you?