Each day a leading business figure looks back at their student days, and explains why it's vital to find a place in school for the 61 million children in the world who currently must go without.
I have often said that you can't define a woman by just one point in her life. I have had periods as a full time Mum, a writer, a campaigner, a charity boss and even a pretend Olympian. But perhaps the most difficult job I have had was building and running a business.
The thing I learnt most from it (and it's a lesson business leaders from Duncan Bannatyne to Martha Lane Fox keep reminding me about) is that most booming businesses succeed because of the talents of their people. If the staff you employ aren't able to gather the right information and solve problems quickly, even the best ideas will fail. Ambitious companies need talented workers, so it isn't a surprise to me that business chiefs are among the world's most passionate campaigners for education.
By uniting corporate leaders from across sectors and across continents, the new Global Business Coalition for Education aims to amplify their voices and bring the dynamism of the private sector to bear on one of the great public policy challenges of our times.
We have already organized successful delegations to Brussels and Addis Ababa and are looking forward to participating in the launch of the UN Education First initiative at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week.
Our membership is growing all the time but you don't need to run a business to be involved. Individual supporters can follow us on Twitter or check the home page of our new website for regular news.
Securing education for all is going to mean bridging old divides between the private, public and not for profit worlds. No one sector can meet the Millennium Development Goals on its own and I'm delighted to have the support of business leaders who recognize that the road to jobs and justice starts in the classroom.
As some of these leaders join forces this week to launch the Coalition, we were invited by The Huffington Post to share just why they believe education for every child is a right -- and why business has a big role to play in achieving school places for the 61 million children worldwide who receive no formal education.
So the heads of some of the mightiest global corporations including Carlos Slim of Grupo Carso, Bill Green of Accenture and Dominic Barton of McKinsey, will be posting their personal memories of school days, highlighting their first steps on the road to success, and sharing their passion for finding every girl and boy in the world a place at school today.
For my part I started off at the Arusha School in northern Tanzania, where my mum ran her own English/Kiswahili nursery school, and my dad worked in educational publishing. The lifestyle was a mix of the ex-pat world and integration with local Tanzanians, which feels part of a long-gone era when this wonderful country was newly independent.
Years later I finished my schooling at Acland Burghley school in North London, which is where I encountered Joe Kusner, my inspirational art teacher. When we first met, I was determined that although I could appreciate art, I was no good at it myself. But Joe persuaded me that if I focused only on academic subjects, I was missing out on a lot. I can still remember his quiet words, and the feeling of humility at my arrogance in dismissing something simply because I didn't happen to be good at it.
The art room was literally the heart of the school. It had such warmth and energy. There we learned to open our eyes to enjoying art, drama, music and dancing. Even though I later went on to work in business, it was in the area of promoting the arts that I made my mark. It was no surprise that when I tracked down Joe many years later, he had received an award from the Queen in recognition for his achievements as a teacher. Education is about reading and writing, but it is also about art and drama and sport and personal development. As a world -- at the United Nations -- we made a promise to educate every child. We need to keep it.
This story is the first of a series by the Global Business Coalition for Education. GBC-Ed is bringing together the world's business leaders in pursuit of the UN's second Millennium Development Goal, universal primary education. Find out more by following GBC-Ed on Twitter at @gbceducation, and read the next in the series: Bill Green
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So, you advocate letting the 1% (corporate interests) design the curriculae to train the 99% how to better serve (i.e., be more servile to) that same 1%. I oppose your agenda completely.
For even the poorest amongst us, one on one education is possible with an online individualized audio visual educational interaction. It is a fair way to judge the achievement level which a student can reach and the education can be fine tuned to different learning speeds and abilities. Yes, the teaching profession as we know it will be phased out because it is so inefficient and offers such poor results.
My book EDUCATION REFORM, available on Kindle and Nook Book, shows how you can create a new functional unbiased equal opportunity educational system for everyone.
Most historical artwork is a poor representation of real natural beauty and even the beauty of the Mona Lisa is a far cry from the beauty of a real living person. Delacroix's Men of a Raft is one of my rare favorites.
Unfortunately most teachers are not qualified to select the best of the best historical human achievements which are worth saving, especially not in their entirety. I am calling for a radical necessary update of modern education and am leaving the updating of "critically important" human achievements in the liberal arts to people like you who are steeped in old traditions which need a radical update if the world with its biodiversity is going to be saved for future generations.
When I stand each day with my teenaged students, I am ever aware that their trajectories lead anywhere, and I teach to that end. If you think that teaching offers poor results, all you need do is come and see.
Internet learning is utterly biased, not unbiased. It consideres not different learning styles, the social aspect of learning that so many need (and is required for work), offers limited variety and so only works for a certain type of learner.
Traditional schooling is ever evolving and changing wiith technology. If the draconinan "reformers" would back off and allow educators a place at the table, things would go much smoother, and all interested parties could work together to the desired goals of improving education for all.
Eventually computer education will become so good that humanoid teaching robots which look and behave like teachers will do most of the teaching and the need for human teachers is going to be largely eliminated! FEAR of being replaced by a robot is the major roadblock which teachers will have to overcome but it is vitally important to do so for the benefit of future generations of students yearning to succeed at learning important things that this world has to offer.
WHAT should be taught students is the next important question to answer if education is to be radically improved for the technological 21st century. My book EDUCATION REFORM, available on Kindle or Book Nook, also answers what should be taught students in the 21st century.
Nor should it be.
Stick to selling widgets and let actual educators run our schools.
This corporate thinking is killing creativity. And honestly, most kids are rebeling against this one size fits all mentality.
The school system was not broken until corporate interests convinced us there was a problem. Kids used to learn shop, wood shop, auto shop, welding, home ec, leather crafts, art, drama, music. The more corporate interests take, the worse test scores become.
Stop already.