【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 w, I’m confident you canmatch or exceed anything they do, but we don’t do it by just resting on what we’ve donebefore. We’ve got to outwork and outinnovate and outhustle everybody else. We’ve got tothink about new ways of doing things.
　　And part of our concern has been our high schools, a lot of them were designed withcurriculums based on the 1940s and ‘50s and ‘60s, and haven’t been updated. So the ideabehind this petition is how do we start making high school, in particular, moreinteresting, more exciting, more relevant to young people.
　　Last year, for example, I visited a school called PTECH this is in Brooklyn a high schoolthat partnered with IBM and the City University of New York to offer its students not only a highschool diploma, but also an associate’s degree in puter systems or electromechanicalengineering. IBM said that PTECH graduates would be the first in line for jobs.
　　Then I visited a high school in Nashville that offers “academies” where students focus on aspecific subject area but they’re also getting handson experience running their own creditunion, working in their own TV studios, learning 3D printing, tinkering with their own airplane which was pretty cool. I never got to do that. I did get my own airplane later in life. (Laughter.) Although I’ve got to give it back. (Laughter.) I don’t get to keep it.
　　But this is stuff I didn’t get to do when I was in high school and I wish I had. But it’s stuffyou have to know how to do today, in today’s economy. Things are moving faster, they’re moresophisticated.
　　So we challenged America’s high schools to look at what’s happening in a place like PTECH,look at what’s happening in cities like Nashville, and then say what can you do to make sureyour students learn the skills that businesses are looking for in highdemand fields. And weasked high schools to develop partnerships with colleges and employers, and create classes thatfocus on reallife applications for the fields of the future fields like science and technology andengineering and math. And part of the reason we have to do this now is because othercountries, they’ve got a little bit of a lead on us on some of these areas.
　　A country like Germany right now focuses on graduating their high school students with atechnical degree equivalent that give them a head start. So we’re asking schools to look intowhat places like Germany are doing.
　　Now, not every school that enters into this petition for the $100 million is going to win because we don’t have enough money for everybody, and we want to force schools to think hardand redesign, and we want to reward the schools that are being most innovative and areactually proving some of the concepts that they’re trying out. But the great thing is thatthrough this petition, schools across the country that entered have changed the way theyprepare their students, and have already made enormous improvements, even before they getthe grant. And, ultimately, we had to choose the top Youth CareerConnect initiatives. Today,I’m proud to say that schools across America are putting up some pretty impre