The United States is not serious about education, according Monday's featured speaker in the L.A. Pittenger Student Center at the 11th Annual Jack Beyerl Student Affairs Lecture.
There is a War on Poverty, a War on Drugs but not a War on Ignorance, said Eugene White, superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools.
White said that because of technology and advancements, the world is becoming smaller and is equalizing forces with the world's superpowers.
"It will be important for young people to know what they are competing against," White said.
He said he regularly visits Ball State University because he is an alumnus and likes to keep informed about the school's progress.
Katie Slabaugh, assistant to the dean of Student Affairs, and Lynda Wiley, director of Student Organizations and Activities, said they invited White to speak because he is active in Indianapolis with proposals to make students more prepared for college.
"He is an alumni, so he also has a tie to Ball State and is knowledgeable in the field," Wiley said.
White said a third-grade student in Beijing asked him if he knew where Purdue University was, and White said he did. White said he then asked third-grade students in the United States if they knew where Purdue was, and they had no clue.
"The boy in Beijing already knew the top 15 engineering universities in the world, so if he did not get into one in China he could go to one of those," White said. "The third graders here in the United States only knew about Purdue's basketball team but could not tell me where the university was."
The purpose of the lecture was to show how a lot of students do not understand how hard they have to work to be successful.
A lot of people just have to memorize information they learn, which can help them work at McDonald's, White said.
"To be a leader you need to be able to be a critical thinker, evaluate, apply material learned and analyze," he said. "These people train to be masters of the universe."
White said workshops need to be set up in high schools around the state where college students can go and talk to high school students about what college life is like. He also said there needs to be campus seminars for middle school and high school counselors and an improvement in high school to explain college transition practices. He said these transition practices need to go from orientation to graduation, not just until the end of freshman year.
White said he wanted to make his speech relevant to what students can do to better prepare for college. He said expectations in some Indiana towns are not high enough, and the level of instruction in high schools is not where it should be for students to get the most out of their learning.
"It is important for teachers to know their subject matter," White said. "The better teachers know their subject matter, the better they can teach it."
Students do not care how much you know until they know how much you care, he said.
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