Benjamin Franklin Institute
of Global Education

- Benjamin Franklin

John Hibbs in Melbourne

For the folks in Australia, let me tell you it's great to be here. I can say that very honestly because 40 years ago this month I took up residence in a section of southwest London called Earl's Court ---more affectionately known as Kangaroo Valley. There and then I learned all the verses of Waltzing Matilda, the differences between Rugby League and Rugby Union .... even what a billabong was.

I also learned the true meaning of the word "mate" -- made crystal clear when I drove 12,000 miles overland from London to Sydney with two terrific guys from Perth and one great lady from Brisbane. Ever since then I've been pretty well convinced that warmth and hospitality is built directly into your genetic code.

Some very special thanks therefore goes to the WebCt team, most particularly Michael, Barbara, Steve, Mark, Dan, Michelle and Deb,. Also thanks to Andy Pincon in Chicago and Terry Redding in Florida who are making it possible to hear me over an ordinary telephone and over the Internet worldwide. And of course to Midi Cox who not only prepared all the slides, but spent a gazillion hours brainstorming with me what I would say here today.

Also as a brand new part of our virtual Franklin team is Allen Peacock in Alabama who is transcribing my voice into text in real time where that text is instantly appearing in a text chat room...something crucial for the deaf and welcomed by non English speakers who can get real time machine translations in seven languages. Thank you Allen.

All of this is archived on the Net and can be viewed or heard upon close......so go ahead and snooze.

The truth is that all this magic doesn't mean zip if I can't stimulate you in saying something worth remembering. In this regard, I thought I was in good shape when I boarded the airplane last week.

Instead, I got jolted by some conversations in Auckland, triggered by headline news about American warships and their presence inside New Zealand waters. The short of it is that the Kiwis are being forced to choose to either abandon strong principles about nuclear policy or risk costly American economic sanctions.

Given U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty and recent disclosures of Pentagon papers urging the construction of brand new tactical nuclear weapons, all of this caused an avalanche of thoughts directly related to my topic at hand.

Please bear with me for a moment. I promise to connect all the dots.

For you in Australia, what the Kiwis are undergoing right now is no surprise - at least to those old enough to remember Yankee shenanigans in your elections back in the 70's.

Neither does it come as any surprise to my very good friend Dr. Arun Mehta in New Delhi who told me just a few weeks ago that the prime reason India built the bomb was to protect themselves against incoming American cruise missiles.

Of course it comes as no surprise to the people of Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, Haiti, Grenada, Yugoslavia, Panama, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Afghanistan, all of whom have felt the hot lash of Uncle Sam when things aren't done in accordance with the chiefs in Washington.

Neither is it a surprise to a few outspoken lawyers, professors and clergy who last month brought suit in Los Angeles federal court on behalf of the prisoners in Cuba.

The gist of their argument is that might does not make right; that the protections of both the Geneva Convention and long standing American criminal statutes cannot be brushed aside just because the king says it's okay and the public at large is in a lynching mood.

That kind of disregard for the law is also not okay for the millions of Allied soldiers killed in action because citizens in Germany and Japan did not speak up when their own political leadership created brand new laws giving legal cover to criminal activities.

We have all learned from Madison, Paine, Franklin, Jefferson and Locke that when one man is enslaved all, are not free.

We have also learned that those societies which dearly protect the rule of law and individual liberties are the same ones which enjoy abundant opportunities for wealth creation.

How does this connect with education? And what I came here to talk about?

I say the path to a better, safer, saner world runs through the classroom, not the battlefield. This is a path which now lies wide open because of marvelous new technologies from people like WebCt, applied in the classroom by people like you.

What you and I have in common is an end destination where there is universal access to affordable education, worldwide.

We cannot stand idle while scarce resources are spent on more cannons when they should be spent on more chalk.

Equally important, we must remain steadfast in the protections of basic human rights and due process even when that is the unpopular thing to do.

For all of these reasons I say that we in academia have a special responsibility - indeed a moral imperative - to ring the alarm about any government action which threatens that which we hold so dear.

And, finally I hope that because at one time I wore an U.S, Army Green Beret, that that piece of ancient personal history will add some weight to my arguments that these dots are indeed well connected.

Now, with these concerns in mind, and in my fervent hope that someday we will put the military in the back of the bus, I would like to discuss my plan for making sure education rides way up in the front.

Here are the five premises on which that plan rests.

The first premise is that the world of education has failed to merchandise itself with Madison Avenue branding techniques; and that this failure is largely responsible for far too many educators being both under-valued and underpaid.

The second premise is that it is inexcusable that education does not have a pinnacle award which is as globally recognized as the Nobel or the Pulitzer or an Oscar; and that until there is such global recognition our failures will continue.

The third premise is we have several models for creating a globally recognized prize and a realistic opportunity to hold an event as big as Hollywood's Motion Picture Academy; and that we owe it to ourselves to craft an enterprise which can accomplish these goals.

The fourth premise is that such efforts will accelerate greater use of technology and significantly improve the outcome of our work; and that these activities will therefore be supported by major corporations dependent on us for knowledge workers and knowledge customers.

The fifth premise is that the path to a better, safer, saner world is by universal access to affordable education. Yes, that is an exceptionally difficult path but it can be made easier if we widely publicize our achievements and gather onto our bandwagon celebrities and public officials who can be attracted to our spotlights and our megaphones.

Those are the premises, now let me talk about each one individually.

The first premise I admit is a hard one - about the importance of branding and merchandising and promotions and public relations.

What's hard is that the culture of education is keenly resistant to stuff of this nature. Conventional wisdom has it that our job is to educate, not to advertise. That the lessons from the corporate world - firms like Rolex and Cartier, Nike and MacDonald's, - have no application to us in our work.

Baloney.

The battle for students - the ugly word is customers - is just beginning. Institutions of learning which do not have merchandising skills are as handicapped as a golfer without a sand wedge. Staying on the leader board of education, and keeping the corporate snouts out of our tent, means learning to use some of their tools.

Also this ---

I find it a good reminder that in a globalized world things change very rapidly. A dozen years ago the Soviet Union was the biggest threat on the planet. Today's it's Osama bin Laden.

Just as nobody forecasted the sudden demise of the Soviet Empire or the ghastly destruction of September 11, nobody should be very secure in the belief that education will be delivered by the same folks it has since Bologna - or Cairo.

The order of today's world is rapid change. Get used to it. Also get used to the fact that if you are a provider of toothpaste or technology or Sociology 101, branding, merchandising, marketing and prompt innovation is crucial to good design strategy....and long term survival.

Premise Two - About globally recognized prizes

This is an easy one. The plain fact is that it's inexcusable that we don't have a globally recognized prize with as much prestige as a Nobel and a stage for the winners as big as those built for the Oscars.

There are many, many reasons why we should have such a prize; but the most compelling of all is also most irrefutable -- money.

More money is spent in one single day on education than is spent on all the movies on earth in one entire year. In fact, more money is spent on education than on food or clothing or housing or transportation.

Yet somehow the bosses in our Towers believe the hard lessons of money and merchandising don't apply to us in our little sheltered world.

The fact is our world is neither sheltered nor little. The fact is merchandising and edutainment is as much a part of our landscape as the Opera House and Sydney Harbor.

Like it or not, money talks and baloney walks.

We should not just be comfortable with those facts, we should embrace them; and vigorously promote them.

Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, if we don't beat our own drum, nobody else will. And if we don't beat it in a way that millions can hear the message, we will continue to ride in the back of the income bus.

Now, About Prizes of prestige and big audiences.

Is it possible to hold an award ceremony where millions will attend? And give out prizes with the stature of a Nobel?

My answer is yes, - absolutely.

The technical and distribution opportunities for large audience gathering are well known and not all that hard to implement.

There are 80,000 community radio stations and several thousand niche television broadcasters which devote part of their programming to education. During Global Learn Day Five, last year, we partnered with radio in Europe and television in India and proved that our audience could grow from several thousand to several million.

What is necessary - and possible - is to harness the collaborative power of the Net with the broadcast power of niche media. If we do that with skill and dedication and proper resource allocation it is within our reach to hold a celebration approaching a half billion people. .....a goal I think we can reach by the end of this decade.

The good news is the event models for guidance and inspiration are all around us ... Models like the World Cup, the Olympic Games, The Rose Parade....or my two favorites, the America's Cup and Little League Baseball.

Trust me on this ---- if you hold an event which lasts 24 hours, and if you involve outstanding people from all 24 time zones, and if you put some big name speakers under the lights, and if your audience is filled with highly motivated people on the way up, very big things ­ very good things - are likely to happen.

The really good news is we already have such an event - it's called Global Learn Day and we've held five of them. On our stage we've had guys like Nelson Mandela and the real "father of the Internet," Vint Cerf. We've also had Cisco's CEO who is unalterably convinced the killer application of the Net is distance education. We've had Sir John Daniel who changed the landscape of higher education in the U.K

We've also had half a dozen American senators, some high faluten ministers and some big city mayors. We had scientists from Antarctica and school teachers from Nepal and technologists from Andora and ecologists from Zambia. We almost had John Glenn from outer space but NASA had the nerve to change the date of their launch, so that one didn't work out. We have guys like Perry Morrison in Western Australian whose work with Aboriginals would make you all proud. And Terry Redding whose theories about high self directed learning should become a global imperative.

We attracted an audience from 193 countries. Why do they come? Because they want to be on our 24 hour non stop Voyage of Discovery side by side with map makers charting the richest territory in the history of mankind, a territory called cyberspace.

For all of these reasons, please mark your calendars - Global Learn Day 6 is October 13.

Enough about audiences and events - you can come to our panel tomorrow morning to hear about how we do all this on what most corporate bosses would call chump change.

How about nominations and winner selection?

Recently, we set up the Socrates Academy where 21 Deans do the governing - and no, I'm not one of them. Yes, there's a whole lot of handwring about how it will function - what else can you expect 21 intellectuals from The Academy? - Soon enough they will decide the format for the nominations --- but in my opinion what we don't need is another prize for the best teacher of this or the best teacher of that.

What I say we do need is a prize for heroes like John Dada who built a telecenter in outback Nigeria powered by the sun. That, all by itself, is pretty neat.

What I think is far more important is that John imports into his African schoolhouse e-education and e-training and exports from it Nigerian brain power.

What John Dada understands best are the linkages between electronic marketing, telecommuting and bigger paychecks for those who come into his sun-powered, brain powered, muli-purpose work center.

So what's our biggest problem -- besides money?

The biggest problem is we live in a nano second world where all things are supposed to be done in an instant.

That kind of attitude is deadly for projects like this.

What we need are people who think in terms of decades, not years. People who would treasure Stewart Brand's "The Clock of The Long Now" --ones who would agree this project is "generationaly worthy" ---something my grandson Michael Ross, will want to pass on to his grandson. It's for sponsors who know that if we can grow awareness in the miracles of distance education we can grow the size of the pie...so vendors like WebCt can get more of their share.

Is such awareness about distance education needed? You bet.

How many know there are over 1.2 million courses available from hundreds of fine universities worldwide?

How many know that education online is better than education face-to-face?

How many employers know that workers trained by distance means are more likely to become all stars than those trained conventionally?

Here's our deal with the corporate world.

We bring them knowledge customers and knowledge workers. They bring us the resources to build our stage, promote the event and fund the prizes.

Now, to my last Premise and some conclusions.

I say, again, the surest path to a better, safer, saner world is by universal access to affordable education. It's a drum we should beat every day because it's a message worth repeating every day.

I want it to be a message which attracts people like you.

So, folks, that's my pitch... Please join our Socrates Academy and be part of Global Learn Day Number Six, ...

ŠŠŠbut before I close and take some questions, I want to return to my thoughts at the beginning of this speech when I told you about my trip overland to Sydney.

By sheer luck the four of us wound up in Berlin in June 1963 and watched John Kennedy gave his very famous Ich Bin Ein Berliner speech. As was his custom, with brilliant eloquence and grace and Kennedy charm, the President repeated a five word answer to a question he posed to himself.

The question was:

----- Which is the better system -

communism or democracy?

Memorialized for all time, Jack Kennedy's five word answer was:

"Let them come to Berlin" .

On one side of that Wall was prosperity and freedom. On the other was misery and incarceration.

On that sunny June afternoon, Kennedy's firmest promise was that when the Wall came down - as he swore it would - the entire world would salute West Berliners for being on the front lines of a battle he knew we had to win.

Now, today, we are engaged in another battle with an enemy with an ideology as evil as that of the Soviet Union.

I say we in the world of education are on the front lines of a battle we too must win. I say that our arsenal must include spot-lighting the value of our work and the benefits of our classrooms. That radio and television is part of our ground force. And glitz is part of our fire power.

With all that in mind, I would like to believe that when educators in the future are asked --

"Who are the bravest fighters in the world of education and where can they be found?

That our answer to this question will be

Let them come to the Academy Awards of Education. It's a celebration we hold every October on a Voyage of Discovery. With stops in all 24 time zones.

Also known as Global Learn Day.

Thank you.

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