Will they be able to sustain?

Yesterday, my wife Connie and I went on a charity house walking tour in the affluent Connecticut River town of Essex. Not only were the homes themselves representative of great (and comforting) wealth, the people thronging the tour seemed mainly our age (over 60), and well to do. My 2000 Subaru shared a lot with cars that cost more than we owe on our house (and will take another 6 years to pay). My point?

These are people who managed (I assume mainly in business) to demonstrate to others that they were highly valuable to enterprise. In exchange for what they could do with their talents for business, they made a lot of money. Further, I must assume that why they were valued so much is that they had learned how to sustain their businesses. To sustain is to To hold up: bear, carry, support. These folks were apparently able to do this.

I put this in the past tense. For there is tomorrow and a business future so much more challenging to our current learners than any of these prosperous Essexians could even imagine. We/they got ours. Much money is tucked away to fund many more charity house tours. While standing in line, I could not help overhear some talking about the private colleges they paid their kids' ways through, the big weddings, the second homes in Vermont or Cape Cod.

What about tomorrow?

Are we teaching so that our current business learners will be able to sustain the business organizations they are signed on to serve?

Is the content we proffer relevant to a globally competitive business future?

Are the ways we teach compatible with the the ways these students must go forth and learn their way into the future?

Will they be able to sustain business so well as to be enriched to the extent that one day, after 30 or so years, they will walk the streets of a still prosperous Essex, Connecticut, admiring the homes of our former business students?

I know, some reading this will be put off by the very notion that our job is to launch careers of the next wave of elites. I know I am, but, then again, I do hope one of my former students is able to give a gift to my school that creates scholarships and other opportunities for those whose families live far and away from that pricey corner of my state.

What do you think?