The Sum

Our society has strength in individuality and independence of each person. We respect the idea so much that it is close to the point of “indifference”.

We (and our children) are constantly facing competition from international talent. As a matter of fact, the economic concept of “mobility of sources of production” recognizes that talent from overseas will continue to flow in because we have better reward for any level of talent.

Once we realize this and agree on this, we need to examine how and why the international talent gets here and what can be done. Another way to look at this is to follow the model that people in some overseas countries follow.

Likes and Dislikes: We allow our kids to follow their heart in deciding the career path. Academic Education is secondary in importance to Sports. Liberal Arts draw as big a crowd as the top professional schools for Law or Business. We need emphasis on mathematics and science. The children in other countries have to study mathematics and science. As a parent you can help your child gain interest in mathematics and science. Play small game around a theme which relates to the subject. Help your child develop interest and after a couple of years your child would be bright in the subjects like mathematics and science.

Treat it like a project: We are very cautious with money. Spending money on education is like having a project. What is the pay back period? Question the basics! Apply the “discounted cash flow” method to find the present value of the “investment”. The idea is not about discouraging a child from going to college and to become a carpenter, instead. The idea is to help the child understand that education, time spent on it, money spent on it, are, all valuable and you need to look at “maximizing” the returns. If a child studies mathematics and science, he can still choose to become a carpenter but if he does not study these subjects, perhaps the child has no other option.

Imagine, your child may be a year old, at present or a senior. This is a responsibility of the parent, the guardian to reinforce the ideas in a child. May be, we need to reduce the importance of independence of individual to help the individual (the child) develop into a more successful person who can compete at home and abroad with the international talent.

The fact is that in most other countries, children are getting help from the parents and we need to adjust, accordingly.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 23rd, 2006 at 5:47 am and is filed under Uncategorized | . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.