Only two days before Austin children are due to hit the books again, renowned educational speaker Dr.

Wednesday, September 01, 1999

Only two days before Austin children are due to hit the books again, renowned educational speaker Dr. Willard R. Daggett told business people, educators and parents on Tuesday that the biggest problem with schools is one of culture. We need to change ours.

"The American educational culture prepares students for more school, for the next test, the next grade, the next school," Daggett said. "Elementary school builds toward middle school, middle school towards high school and high school towards college."

Schools don’t, however, prepare young people to function in today’s workforce, according to Daggett. Part of the reason for that is a lowering of academic standards at America’s colleges and universities. A bigger part is that schools aren’t teaching the type of skills used daily in the workplace.

"There’s a perception in this country that if you’re talking about work, you’re talking about low education skills," Daggett said. "Ten years ago academic requirements (for higher education) were actually surpassed by academic requirements for work."

Daggett, who is the author of 12 textbooks and four books on educational leadership, has led school reform initiatives in several states as well as working with ministries of education in other countries, including Japan, Germany, England and Russia. He was in Austin Tuesday at the behest of the FMS (Freeborn, Mower, Steele) Tri-County School to Work Partnership.

In the morning, the speaker challenged educators to look at their teaching methods and the results. At lunch, he challenged business people to partner education to achieve more "rigorous and relevant" instruction.

Part of the problem with education, Daggett pointed out, is that it’s turning out students who don’t have the skills needed in today’s work world. He wasn’t only talking about vocational skills, such as welding, or automechanics, he was talking about basic skills like reading.

"What do we use to teach reading skills?" he asked the audience.

"Novels, books, plays … that’s called reading for personal response. What do we need to read most in the workplace? Manuals, reading for information … things that you read, do, read, do. Software information, tax instructions, …"

Twenty-nine other countries, Daggett said, require four years of technical reading to graduate from high school.

"Not only do we stop teaching reading in the sixth grade, but all we use to teach it is literature."

Daggett made it clear that he wasn’t advocating the end of literature in school, more that he advocates different types of reading and reasoning skills, and teaching for more than knowledge and application within a discipline.

"The real world isn’t divided into different disciplines like social studies, biology and health – they overlap," Daggett said. "In the real world, what we learn we have to apply between disciplines, apply to real world predictable and unpredictable problems."

In the end, he challenged the business people in the Holiday Inn meeting room to get involved with education.

"If you’re willing to work with a teacher, or do something with your school district, drop your business card and some details in the basket outside the door," he said. " … Ask for a volunteer from the rank and file in your company to work with a math teacher, one hour every two weeks, just showing him or her how math gets used every day at work.."

The suggestions went on.

"We’ve been laying the groundwork for two years," FMS Partnership chair Dale Burmeister, who is also manager of training and development at the Hormel Foods Corp., said. "Daggett was the man to talk to educators and business people and get them on board. We’re ready to take the next step and look at taking specific actions at the different school districts,"

For more information on the School to Work program or Daggett’s presentation, Burmeister suggested residents call their local school district and ask for the school to work coordinator. School to Work is a state-sponsored initiative.