Each week I meet up with my good friend Patrick Dwyer Merrill Lynch employee and a passionate advocate for the city of Miami. In fact both Patrick and I were born and raised here and we have both spent our careers seeking to improve the city and do all that we can to support it. Each week Patrick and I meet up to put the world to rights and recently one of the hottest topics of debate has been the education system. There are some changes which we’d love to make to education, both here in Miami and across the country, have a look and see whether you agree or not. 

Business

The way in which we teach business has to change as we are currently teaching people about the world of business but there is not enough focus on actually running a business. When students leave the education system they should have all of the tools available to run a successful business. Our young men and women should understand their tax obligations, spotting gaps in the market, developing products, putting great teams together and every other detail of what it means to run a successful company. 

Social Skills

Every school does have a course of some sort which focuses on society but there is still a long way to go in terms of how we work as a community and accept others. You only need to look at the race issue here in the USA to see that whilst we have come a very long way in the last 50 years, there is still a long distance yet to run. The same can be said for the LBGTQ community and we believe that with better education, we can help to put an end to foolish prejudice which is present throughout our society. 

Languages

Learning a foreign language should be obligatory for everyone throughout the education system, and not just in the primary years of their education. We live in a world which is smaller than it has ever been and with more people moving around the globe for work and to live, we must find ways of bridging the gap between cultures. Learning a foreign language is a great skill to have and if more people did so then we would learn to become more accepting of other cultures and races. 

Clearing Out 

We need to re-address the way in which we teach many subjects, especially when it comes to the sciences and math. We often teach people skills which they are never going to need in their lives and that is why we need to have a shake-up. Learning about pythagorus, or cell formulation is great if you plan to become an engineer but if you see your future as a plumber, it is unlikely that these skills are going to help. We must find a way of means testing our students so that we can teach them the knowledge which they need, and not the knowledge which the education system believe to be important.