Obama Education Speech: Innovation, Problem Solving, and Twitter

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2009-09-07 19:31:00 UTC
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Twitter CEO Evan Williams and President Obama: Inspiration?

Look past all the controversy and President Obama's education speech is an evocation of the heart of the American mythology; work hard and you can achieve. The speech is an interesting case study in entrepreneurial role models.

The main thrust of the content is about the fact that while parents, teachers, governments all have a responsibility to help in our education, how we use what we've been given is ultimately a matter of personal responsibility and initiative.

Importantly, Obama recalls the sort of "asset-based thinking" he was schooled in while organizing in Chicago. He says "every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide."

Of course, there's a call to action to recognize how education will prepare students for the problems we face. Importantly, in this speech it's not just about how engineering and more PhD's will help the US keep its technological advantage. Instead, he says "You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free."

Finally, in the climax of the speech he calls out a new generation of technological innovators and links them to the history of students who changed the world:

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.
It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.
That's some serious company to be in - particularly for Mark Zuckerberg, who at 25ish was actually about 5 years old 20 years ago - for the titans of web2.0. But it also demonstrates how different this generation of the internet really is.
We are at the dawn of a totally different era of connection. What we do with it, how we try to control it, how we try to harness it is all still to be determined, but the raw potential for transformational community and connectivity is here.
Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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