The guy that invented the wheel may not have profited from his invention because there weren’t many Unicycle riders back then. But I bet the second guy did. For he took two wheels, found a straight stick and stuck a wheel on each end of the stick, put a box in the middle and LEARNED that he could haul more in his contraption than on his back and called it a cart.

This guy that invented the cart didn’t have the cart market to himself for very long, because another guy came along and logic told him that if he would take two axels and four wheels and join them with a stick perpendicular to the axels he could really carry a load, and the cart business took a dive and the wagon took center stage. Knowledge and Information were advanced.

With the four wheels up and running, this new wagon had one more problem to be solved. You couldn’t steer it. So the 4th guy looks at the wagon and thinks, “If I put a 5th wheel under the floor of the wagon box, and hooked it to the middle of the front axel the driver could now steer it. “

Our teamster now had to get his newly invented machine to move. So who was going to pull this wagon loaded with stuff?

Yes, they even had stuff back then.

Well he looked around and there she was, ‘his Sweet Thing’ standing nearby, and he asked her if she would pull the wagon. Because he was the Boss of His outfit she needed to just say YES.  but she said NO. I’m sure that’s how the present day Women’s Rights Organization got started.

To really change the impact man could make on our planet Earth, the wagon needed that something that wouldn’t argue about being put on overload. Enter the Ox. But the Ox had a Weak Link. He was slow, and as man learned more he hurried more.

The ‘need for speed’ was born.

You guessed it! Some guys spied a horse on a distant hill and said to himself, “If I catch him I think he can pull my Wagon!”  Catch him he did. And our first Cowboy was born.

Well, it didn’t take him long to invent the harness, and civilization would never be the same. The point I’m trying to make is that the wheel was invented with a little bit of information and a whole lot of ‘how too Knowledge’.

Today I have in my hand an iPhone 4. I’m told that this gadget has more information stored inside its 1/2 inch thick by shirt pocket long size than all the libraries in the World.

But information by itself, if you can’t use it, is worthless. Today we are raising an ever growing number of young people that are NOT taught how to put information to tangible use, and the educational community needs to address this problem.

So I elect myself to start with three suggestions.

• 1st: We need to have a new job description for our colleges and universities when they go out in search of new teachers. Let’s not limit the field that can qualify to those with doctors degrees only. Let’s instead open it to all that want to be considered a candidate for the job, regardless of Degrees hanging on the wall. Then give the job to the best qualified person, who is capable of meeting the needs of students first.

• 2nd: We need workable internship and apprenticeship programs that meet the expectations of the student and the expectations of the entity offering the opportunity. The program must be symbiotic in nature so that both intern and person or company profit from the experience, or it won’t work.

• 3rd: Teachers Unions of our land need to consider the rights of a student to learn on a par with a teachers right to reasonable working conditions.

This month of September, with a few million kids heading of to institutions of supposed Higher Learning, and most wanting to go to the prestige university, worry not if you don’t get accepted. It may be a blessing in disguise. Because most of what they’ll teach you, you can dial up on your iPhone.

What’s missing today in most institutions of higher learning is how to transform  information into workable skills. The body of information one has with little knowledge of how to apply it will just be latent inklings of what could have been. Most employers today must see their investment in new additions as their payroll  ‘Payoff’.

Even though I have been critical of our houses of higher learning, for most kids, it’s still a good place to get 4 or 5 years older and they will be better for the experience. Hopefully today’s professors will still challenge their  students to make their imaginations ‘dream the impossible dream’ and their inquisitiveness is still asking the right questions.

If a person has PASSION about what he or she does I know there is a magic carpet in the mind  that will direct you to the places where lies the skills to turn dreams into reality. And the hard work necessary to achieve ones goals will not be work at all, just fun. Remember:

With passion there are no hurdles too high.

See ya,

Jack