Glenn, an engineer by training, said Great Britain was able to quickly improve its math and science standards because it has a national education system. His speech covered a vast range of generations from sages like Ralph Waldo Emerson to Capt. Before his speech, video clips of his historic journeys into outer space were played for the audience, beginning with 1962 shots of him being strapped into a space suit for his launch as the first American to orbit the Earth. The retrospective flashed forward to 1998 and showed him marching onto the tarmac to board the space shuttle at age 77, cracking jokes about mixing his Tang with Geritol. Glenn told the crowd that the world spotlight is on education leaders.
Education is the buzzword today.
It's the focus of political campaigns. Everybody wants a piece of it. School board members potentially have more power to shape the nation's future than Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, he said. While Greenspan controls today's economy, school trustees hold the keys to education for generations to come. That responsibility comes with frustrations for elected school board members and the superintendents and teachers they employ, according to a study released yesterday at the convention.