Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty -- a Republican who's getting frequent mention as a GOP contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, was in Raleigh Monday to speak to the 25th Annual Emerging Issues Forum sponsored by N.C. State University and its Institute for Emerging Issues. Pawlenty showed an engaging, thoughtful style that could help him as a contender -- if he chooses to run. He hasn't decided, he said.
But it's clear that he can hold an audience's attention. At the forum -- whose theme this year is creativity -- Pawlenty talked about change and creativity and how they come about. It's an issue he has dealt with constantly as governor of a Midwestern state that is in constant change. Among other things:
-- The notion that everything will be the same is deeply flawed.
-- Change can come for three reasons -- as a result of crisis, as a result of inspired leadership or -- more often -- as a result of innovation, technology and creativity.
-- Change seems less likely to come from government, which is resistant to change. Technology, he said, will deliver change. Government, he went on, is on the cutting edge of obsolescence when it comes to technology.
-- More likely, change is driven by radical decentralization. A perfect example: The public doesn't depend only on the evening news broadcast or the daily newspapers for its news. It gets news from a whole host of sources all day long.
-- Education delivery is changing rapidly; within a generation, fewer students will take courses in huge lecture halls with learned professors using chalkboard on campus at colleges and universities; most students will expect to dial up Econ 101 for a fee of $299. We want colleges and universities in Minnesota to have 25 percent of their courses online by 2015.
-- Most educational institutions have no idea what's coming in the online delivery of educational materials. Some do -- including the UNC system, because President Erskine Bowles is tuned into it and pushing for it.
-- America must solve its high school dropout problem. We can't have a country where one-third of our team is on the bench. Most of the students failing are coming from poor socio-economic backgrounds. It's a civil rights issue.
