Sunday, March 31, 2013

Thomas Friedman, "Need a Job? Invent It": Meet Our Household's "Dish Fairy" . . . Me

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Need a Job? Invent It" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/friedman-need-a-job-invent-it.html?_r=1&), Thomas Friedman tells us that in order to avoid unemployment, our children must be schooled in innovation:

"This is dangerous at a time when there is increasingly no such thing as a high-wage, middle-skilled job — the thing that sustained the middle class in the last generation. Now there is only a high-wage, high-skilled job. Every middle-class job today is being pulled up, out or down faster than ever. That is, it either requires more skill or can be done by more people around the world or is being buried — made obsolete — faster than ever. Which is why the goal of education today, argues [Harvard education specialist Tony] Wagner, should not be to make every child 'college ready' but 'innovation ready' — ready to add value to whatever they do."

Great advice for that one tenth of a percent of our youth capable of heeding this advice.

Consider also that only some 50% of new businesses in America survive five years (see: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/failure-is-a-constant-in-entrepreneurship/). These are not great odds for "innovators" seeking to strike out on their own and implement new ideas. As I personally learned long ago, innovation is not always appreciated coming from raw recruits at many workplaces.

On the other hand, gifted as I am, I have managed to invent my own job: chauffeur to the children, dog walker, toilet bowl scrubber and "dish fairy," i.e. the person responsible in our family for making that pile of dirty pots and dishes in the sink magically disappear every night and find itself, scrubbed and cleaned, back on our shelves and in our cabinets before anyone has rubbed the sand from their eyes in the morning.

I don't know about Professor Wagner, but Professor Albus Dumbledore would certainly be proud of me.

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