NEED WORLD-READY WORKERS? FIRST, WE NEED TO RAISE WORLD-READY KIDS.

“You cannot educate for the future with schools from the past.”

“A global company is a local company…everywhere”.

— 21st century guru

A few years ago, I had the privilege of working on a book with Keith Bellows, who was then the Editor-in-Chief of National Georgraphic Traveler Magazine. At the time, I was writing the CultureWise column for the magazine, and Keith and I became friends. We would often meet in his office in Washington, DC, or in my hometown of NYC, and whenever possible at our favorite watering hole, the King Cole bar. Naturally, the most interesting conversations were always at the King Cole bar. One such meeting revolved around the idea that society wasn’t doing enough to develop “world-ready workers”, that the task was either being overlooked, or left to businesses, because the schools certainly weren’t up to the task. Both Keith and I had young kids at the time who were, if not for the efforts we were putting in as parents, not getting the kind of education that would make them “world-ready kids”, exactly the pre-requisite for being a “world-ready worker”. We noodled this idea around for some time, and decided we needed to write a book about it. Keith, unfortunately, is no longer with us, and he is missed by many, me included. But his ideas are alive in the…