One of the big concerns of technology leaders, educators and politicians these days is the fact that the US is falling behind in preparing students to become engineers, scientists, mathematicians, and in general, people who could help the US stay competitive in the area of technology and science in the future. They all point to the strong math and science emphasis in education that is in place in countries like China and India and the fact that students from these regions as well other countries in South East Asia are producing some of the brightest kids who have their eyes on becoming mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. This has become such a major issue that politicians from both sides of the aisles have been pushing for stronger programs that would reach out and attract more US students to the field of match and science, and in fact, President Bush used his recent State of the Union speech to emphasis this “crisis” and propose additional funding to make the US dealt with this problem aggressively.
While this is a good start, it is not enough. I no longer believe that we can trust just the traditional education system to make sure we attract or produce enough students with the quality skills needed to become top notch scientists, engineers and technologists.
I am convinced we also need programs that can jump-start kid’s interest in these fields as well.

While I think it would have made more sense for technology big wigs with deep pockets to try and tackle this problem creatively, something that the do every day to make their own companies successful, it looks like it took a professional golfer to lay out what I think is the best way to augment this education cycle and at the same time really help kids expand their educational horizons.

On February 10, 2006, Tiger Woods launched the Tiger Woods Learning Center (www.twlc.org) in Anaheim, California, a new type of learning facility that focuses on helping kids become more interested and proficient in the areas of math, science, technology and language arts. This $25 million dollar facility is open to kids ages k-12 and offers them an opportunity to supplement their mainstream education by letting them have access to teachers and technology so that they can become more proficient in these areas. To Dell’s credit, they also contributed to this venture http://www.tmcnet.com as did Nike, Target, American Express, Microsoft, The PGA Tour, along with many others.

But, I think this should be just the start and a model for creating similar types of programs all over the US. Wealthy tech leaders who have been pushing the US Government to allocate more money to help develop more US students gain the proper skills to handle the tech projects of the future so that the US can remain competitive need to step up and create these types of learning centers in their regions. Perhaps Michael Dell can sponsor The Michael Dell Learning Center in Dallas, TX. Or Larry Ellison can sponsor the Larry Ellison Learning Center in East Palo Alto, CA. Bill Gates is already one of the largest philanthropists in the world but perhaps he might also think about sponsoring the Bill Gates Learning Center in Spokane, WA or some other area of the US that really needs help getting local kids into science and math. You get the idea. Tech leaders have had a loud voice decrying the lack of US funding for tech learning as well as chastising the current educational system for not doing enough to produce interest in match and science among the nation’s youth. But as Tiger Woods has shown, perhaps they need to step up and do something themselves to make things happen faster and personally be responsible to contributing to the expansion of tech learning in the US.
Perhaps the Tiger Woods Learning Center can serve as a model for them to emulate and they can create similar centers around the US to make sure the tech world in the US has enough scientists, engineers and mathematicians to assure the United States lead in the world of technology.