While agreeing with you that “The text books are set strictly to fundamentals without discussions related to invention, startup, traction and so forth”, we have frequently heard that the majority of standard text books in use throughout the nation today are based upon a narrowly focused curriculum developed by the TX school board: A group that has some notoriously myopic and biased views about actual history, evolution and life in general. So very glad they have no influence on the curriculum I followed back in the UK and that could even be one of the reasons that other countries are leaving us behind in relative educational standings.

We know that all children start out with a very natural curiosity and strong desire to learn about everything around them. Our modern schooling system however, seems to have devolved into a by-rote process in which critical thinking and real creativity is actually not only unsupported but actively discouraged.

This result most likely is because the makeup of the average classroom today is now so very broadly ethnically and culturally diverse that this alone requires teachers to handle situations that would be beyond most people to manage and control unless done in a very narrowly focused manner. How else do you deal with children from all backgrounds some of whom may not even have command of the language or may come from homes where discipline is regarded as an oxymoronic term?

And since our culture is so obsessed with gaining wealth and consuming stuff, why would some of our children not see greater opportunity to “learn more about pricing/negotiation on the street”? Drugs – be it money or the pharmaceutical kind or both – have become to objective for so many today and our methods and scope of schooling today now do little to combat that lust.

Really like your phrase here as it seems to me that that phrase really encapsulates the notion that is has seemingly been philosophical contradictions that have seemingly enslaved the policy makers behind the drive that has brought us to this unfortunate conclusion: A result for our children, as you have described it in your first paragraph, that has been accomplished essentially under the absurd official guise of building “self-esteem” and avoiding bruising the ego of our children but actually, as I believe, accomplished for a much more sinister, insidious, underlying objective which you also touched upon in your response here.

Besides that wonderfully evocative phrase, your other comments have given me an idea for another blog because, while as relevant here, in replying to you I was at first getting carried away and then realized you have raised additional points that prompt further discussion in depth. So I’ve saved the rest of my response for that next blog with a focus on jobs, job creation or lack thereof and the where and why of job disappearance, never to return.

But then again, we live in a generation where we want to refer to businesses as job creators and not wealth creators….the whole concept of supply and demand have become irrelevant.

In a world of “too big too fail” our economy seeks cogs not critically thinking individuals.  Thus the critically thinking, intelligent individual is to be feared as disruptive.  Success belongs to those who can tweet popular talking points not logically deduct complex ideas.

On one hand VC’s want to believe they are changing the world, and on the other they are wanting to develop a “Moneyball” system for start ups.  Success has become a formula and as such, so should knowledge be nothing more than a formula.  

One thing to remember is all of us suffer from LBS (Lazy Brain Syndrome) currently and/or back when.  If we just keep pushing, a positive difference can be made.

That is why I’ve prodded some bloggers over the past year.  They talk of all economic good to their geo locale… I tell them it would make more sense to network the different locales.  Not sure if any of them can get my usual statement of increased productivity relating to getting 60 hrs of work completed in 40, then maybe they can go travel around everywhere!

Once again, good post and keep it up.  Somewhere we can wake up Baby Boomers, Gen X and Y so we can enable the youngsters today to pull our _____________!

Think it very interesting that you met Deming in your beginning days. I met Peter Drucker while in college in the UK and became a fan of his thereafter; Always hoped to go meet him again here in CA before he passed away but could not do that. Became a fan of Deming later but also while still in the UK.

By living with a lean supply chain, and sourcing globally, you have eliminated some options. Those are most felt by gains in cost of processing. And most companies realize this savings in the elimination of safety stock. I tend to think that when global sourcing is used, you subtract from the value of JIT, as you are taking much higher risks in your supply chain. You take the increase in transit time, but that can be managed, you also take the increase in potential red lights at customs, which you cannot realize in your process without a significant investment in safety stock.

So, my opinion is that JIT is a wonderful process, but the variables for using it with Global sourcing strategies are too risky to be 100% JIT. I would either source domestically and use JIT, or global sourcing, and add in a % of safety stock to protect your production output.