 I want to emphasize that the very purpose of empowerment is within the purpose of education. Education is for the very purpose of empowerment of those who are students, and this is a purpose shared between educators and families and parents of students. For students in the early grades, it is the basic parental purpose of bringing up children to be effective adults. The younger students are the intended beneficiaries of the product. By the time you take this course, you are also very much an active party in this education, with some freedoms in direction of your educational focus. Public schools are supported by tax dollars, the public pays for it, and accordingly is in the position of a customer. The public that pays for a school are local citizens, but modern schools have no interest in delivery of anything to the public for it to value. The parents are that part of the public that has something to receive and value. They can represent the whole public as the public is made up of humans. It is made up of past, present and future parents. Our school's ongoing failure to generate and deliver value to parents of students is an open witness to a public school performance failure. We have to examine that performance purpose further, especially as you are nearing your own adulthood. You will be the parents of the future. What is it that the school can generate that you as a parent could receive? That is the question that defines performance. It addresses the value that you can receive, supporting valuation of what an educational facility is accomplishing for the public that pays for it. As you are coming more into being an effective customer, one being given independence by age and pending maturation, more of the choices are yours. From our studies of organizational performance, you can see that you and your parents represent the public. You are very much a party in interest. You and your parents are the only source of public authority that has purpose. Where the school is unmanaged in its performance cycle, it is managed as to its operations. It has management of what it does, not what it accomplishes. Even more on point, the people who are managing and operating the school are also humans, represented by the parents of students. Their personal purposes align with those of you and your parents. If there is a disconnect, it is organizational direction that is divided from that public purpose. It is the goals and objectives pursued by the school under authoritative direction. It is a separate purpose promoted by leaders in education who accept that their purpose is running the school for the benefit of students. You have two sources of freedom in our educational system. The first is as the object of educational effort. The purpose is to empower you. It is to prepare you for your adulthood, and that preparation is unique with you. Accordingly, you have personal decisions as to some of the gross directions taken and purposes to be served by that preparation. In agreement with others, you are also the true owner of any public educational institutions. You and your parents are the economic source for its corporate operation. Whatever can bring you to agree with others can become a management direction and assignment to those who will otherwise feel free to run things for your benefit. And as is normal in the process, you are increasingly becoming the representative of your parents in the decisions you make. This is more than just freedom. It is a step closer to being the, in fact, customer representative of the public, the decisions that you make as agreed with others, become the public decisions that can arrange the direction for educators. In specific, this provides a potential for coming to agreement with other students based on the value you expect to receive through your education, and assume owner authority to direct and manage educational employees. Of even more potency, consider potential elimination of waste and you are probably being directed to commit both time and effort to some wasteful ends. The challenge that arises in this course is one of being incredibly powerful when addressing any educational institution. It is the power of being a customer. The ultimate decision maker who determines a success or failure of the institution in terms of value you receive. Another potency comes from being the public, the effective owner of public institutions. When gathered with other like-minded members of the public, you are an authority to apply management, to issue mandates to observe and inspect the processes that are supposed to accomplish things for you and your purposes. As a check to this, others are similarly empowered and authorized to act. To exercise this personal power, you generally have to gain the support and agreement of others to what you would have the institution accomplish. The challenge is confusion. It is having the hired leadership at all levels firmly convinced that they are in charge and are authorized to deal with you as a beneficiary of what they properly decide to do for you. Of course, as an individual student that also includes what they would do to you as part of properly and effectively running their educational institutions. The counter, of course, is that being a customer means that you are an independent decision authority. You do not answer to any educational leader for your personal decisions concerning your education or for your investment, your commitment to their education that they would rule over. Your primary source of commitment is your personal determination of what the result of your education, the result that comes to you, will have value. Some things you take on trust, other matters, are very much open to question. This provides you with a personal sense of performance and a definition for waste, for commitments that do not deliver value to you in return for what you put in. Where these are sufficiently obvious to initiate a Pareto level agreement, action can be taken to simply eliminate the commitments both by you and as an owner and as a customer. And then there is the additional realization that the teachers and administrators of your educational institution are also human beings. When addressing what has value to you as a human, they are unlikely to disagree because they share in such values. The admonition to you for exercising this power is concerned for your teachers and other employees. They work for you and any exercise of your potency as people in agreement is a severe breach of their own currently accepted authority. The general rule is to be as considerate of them as you would have them be if they really were in charge and running things. As a side benefit, that might promote an easier transition to customer potency. You could present the new fact that a public school is serving the public and will not successfully be sued at law. The simple truth is that the jury hearing any suit will be drawn from the same local population of owners. Those who might feel otherwise privileged to interfere whether a teacher, union or educational supplier will face the challenge of attempting to regulate the public institution in its attempt to serve the public as represented by those on the jury. The deck is loaded against them and there is also another aspect of service to the public that the type and extent of changes being promoted by our agreements serve a public purpose. That purpose is defined by the abilities and orientation of students to adult performance. What you do both as students and as eventual parents of students is likely to increase the empowerment of people who are educated. Changes initiated in this direction are likely to be very long term improvements and your following generations will be ever more likely to effectively support education. In this course, education is a key source for potential value. It should be approached as something that you get to receive in value. It is something that your parents as the ones who commit the most to your education should also receive in value. In our current environment, the very idea of the public receiving something almost offensive to educators, we are addressing a very deep change in perception. On the other side, you are able to tap into humanity for potency, support for your own family as to insisting that they receive what they value. This is not now what a modern school would deliver to them as beneficiaries of your preparation. You are able to tap into humanity with the local public that owns the school or college arranging for the taxpayers to receive what they value from the operation of a public institution. These are potential areas for agreement. This course provides technical supports for your efforts. It provides the black box as a way to simplify performance matters to the essentials. It hides distractions so that you can focus on what it costs people and what they receive because they accept those costs. It also addresses waste, providing a visual way to address unnecessary costs and products that go to non-customers or that lack parental value. It is a tool for showing that waste to others so they can see it too. You have the tool of public mandate. You have an efficient sampling process to promote effective agreement, leveraging the results of that sampling to enlist others, including leaders, to the efforts that are expected to accomplish what you value. And now you have the technical attitude that most supports your active interaction with leaders who believe that they have privileged authority. You know that they too are human and are to be treated as you would be treated with courtesy and respect. You know that they are to be treated with sympathy for they will have the greatest upset when you and others in agreement assume that your management authority over public efforts. These are general tools for human beings who would design and affect the operation of humanity as a civilization for the purpose of serving people as human beings. The attitude itself is a wonderful performance tool that communicates how we are indeed all in this effort together. The tool of sampling is a tool for establishing agency, a closer and more personal authority than that claimed by employees. It is even more powerful than the authorities associated with public office or employment. It provides a specific direction for authorized activities rather than some general basis for operating an institution. It is a basis for exception management where the public employee only gets general management authorities. And all these tools are there to serve you as you are conscious of what you can and should receive from public institutions. It is that conscious and directed purpose that can define what has to be accomplished and can accordingly enlist the efforts of other citizens or students as well as leaders to actions that are directed by the public. It is called freedom. The choice is yours when it is used in accord with intelligence in the result and its process that will gain the result you value. You are powerful. On identifying the public as the customer for public education we are in a position to gather people in agreement. The public is supposed to receive something of value from the operation of educational institutions. We also have the practical reality that the parents of students will receive on behalf of the larger public. We do not currently have much of a foundation for identifying what educational accomplishment must deliver to be a success. What we have is a general understanding that it is the preparation of the next generation of adults. A general rule of accomplishment is that the customer needs to receive what the customer values if the organization is to continue. This does provide us with a general understanding that the progress into adulthood has to be witnessed to the parents. It is not up to the parents to seek it for themselves. It is the function of the institution to generate and deliver that result to parents of students. Our working ancillary is that almost all real improvements come from eliminating waste. And efforts that do not deliver value to customers are, by definition, waste. They can be eliminated without performance loss. What is readily available for mandate is elimination of costs that deliver no value to parents. It can start with the most offensive behaviors. School employees who deliver no value at all to parents or the public. You might come to agreement on removing all internal support efforts except general management, the principal's office. No more school psychologists, vice principals, or other non-subject staff. If they are to remain, they will have to reorient themselves to delivering services to the parents. If parents can value what they provide, why do they stay on staff? Reorientation to delivery of value to parents is actually well understood and can be initiated by mandate. Consider the effect of customer evaluation. That is a basis for change. The parents evaluating the educator efforts by what those parents have received with, I don't know, as a failing grade. To put management back on track with the average grade given to teachers, it is the grade of school managers and administrators. Their performance purpose is supporting the teachers in their delivery of value to the public. Does the teacher's job include empowering their students? Is it more supporting the parents than providing empowerment by what teachers do? These are potentials for seeking mandates. This is not going to be gentle on modern educators. They are not oriented to serving the public. Their education as teachers is not an education in empowering their students or serving the public. What the teacher does have is humanity, exactly what we share with each other. They have the sense of value in what the parents must receive to value what the educators can do for their next generation. This is where the shift in perspective becomes truly potent for parents. It still is focused on the effect achieved on students, but further on the witness that is accomplishment to the parents. The rule is not forgiving of preferred processes. It is that only what the parents receive can have value. The rest is waste. The rest can be eliminated without loss. The rest can be unfunded and the benefit of tax reductions realized by the public. Where parents accomplish mandate level agreement, the educators are not even a separate party in interest. They are part of the same humanity represented by those parents. Whenever and wherever there is a parental mandate, the one who carries that forward is the agent of the public and can assume exception management over the educational institution for the purpose of that mandate. We also have the public function, one that can be directed to the educators to publish their success to the larger public they serve. Again, the evaluation of parents on what they receive is a potent educational management tool. Applying public management word is now missing. And then there is the obvious potential for teachers and educators to team their efforts with those of the parents. We accomplish where we work together in trust relations. The parents hold the purpose and motivation for student participation that teachers have technical knowledge of education and are working providers. While this is a very large leap forward from where we are, it does open potentials that are not being served in our current educational environment. We are also dealing with the perspective that the business of education has addressed that of involving this student. The modern educator is keenly aware that learning is every bit as important to what they do as their own action teaching. As a business success is based on the purchase decisions of customers, educational outcome is partly based on the decisions and activities of students. One perspective of the difference is seen in the feudal attitude common among today's educators, and that is my students. It is an ownership concept that the students are to work for the teacher, receiving the benefit of what educators do. The other is focus on delivery of what the customer values. In this, the parents are the ones who motivate their student-children. The role of the teacher is technical support for the parents, and it includes focus on the parents' role as customers in a teacher's delivery of value to the parents. That, of course, is what has been missing. It is only when students reach their teenage years that they start to develop an independent motivation, and that is still, though, a substitute for parental involvement. The student, even in later teen years, is more a beneficiary than a customer. The ones who have the greatest motivation are the parents. They have personal responsibility for their own children. The confusion created by addressing educators as authorities stems from the legal agency where teachers stand in place of parents. This is an anti-performance concept. The corresponding performance enhancement starts with recognition that people working together for a shared purpose are many times more effective than people playing their independent roles. If education is to be effective, it will be through teaming educators with parents and child. In the younger years, the student will be a passive part of the team, leaving motivation and general purpose from parents. As students mature, they will become more and more active as a participant, because they will be more independent in the relationship to others. The educational purpose is the public purpose, which is the purpose of parents. This is the basis for the trust relation that permits the establishment of the team. The parents hold the purpose, the parents are the ones who have something of value to receive from the educational effort. It is a service that the parents are to receive. In the teaming effort, the primary function of the educator is technical support for the parents. Performance delivers opportunities for educational outcome that the parents can receive. It needs to provide expertise in the processes that best assure the valued results that the parents can receive. The parent is at the center of the effort in communicating with the student until their teenage years. They become less and less a participant as the student matures and becomes more independent. Technical maintenance of the team should be one of the more important duties of the teacher as it keeps the team focused on parental purpose in having a team effort. The role of educational administration is one of support for the teacher as a team member. The success or failure of the teacher is the success or failure of the administration and they need to share in any metrics. Should a maturing student have a role in evaluating teacher performance? Clearly this is a possibility though we do not have any real history of application. Their involvement in evaluating their own education should only be by approved parents as a true and effective customers of the educational effort. When we look at the corporate nature of an educational team, we also have to consider trust relations. A foundational concept is that all people who are trustworthy in the sense of being consistent in who they are and what choices they make. The better you know the person, the more trust that person. So how concerned our parents in the raising of their children to be effective people is this a consistent purpose? How about teachers? Can we trust them to be interested in the progress of their students? When you reach your later teen years you have the same question concerning yourselves. How much can parents and teachers trust you to see to your future through what you gain from the educational process? Parents can generally trust their own children and individual teachers to see to the parental purpose. Teachers can trust the children to work at learning and trust parents to support what they do. It is a singular purpose and yet there is one challenge after another as to the differences between what parents value and what the educational system insists is right material for education of the next generation. This points out the challenge of someone else applying their own goals and objectives to what the educational process does. Someone is exercising privilege instead of providing service. That of course interrupts performance. It replaces valued accomplishments with doing the right things and doing them correctly. It is people who are worthy of trust. There are others involved in education who are intent on running the organization and ruling over those who perform part of the educational process within the modern institution. Not all that is directed for student consumption is for the public parental purposes of education. There is a demand to commit time and effort in ways that generate no value for parents. There are assigned lessons that are not valued. This is type 1 and type 2 waste. These can be eliminated without loss of performance. Perhaps the most telling of all these is measurement by comparison. It is honoring of protest of some people rising up in opposition to others. Promoting and honoring these anti-performance approaches to life is a witness to a level of purpose failure that is hard to even describe. Our performance alternative will be students who are trained to join with each other instead of disempowering other people. It borders on social insanity that every question becomes an issue to be resolved by overcoming others. The anti-performance nature of lessons promoting this behavior encourages social suicide. But then this course provides the alternative. That empowerment comes from agreement and agreement arises from commonly valued results. If you are able to present the value of the result it becomes potential to enlist others to the action that is likely to gain that result. Effective education is a valued result. It is not defined by the educator, but by value received by parents and enjoyed by students. These are values that can be enjoyed by students making them trustworthy when it comes to matters of empowerment. Lessons in being effective people and increasing ability to accomplish what we value is a foundation for agreement in the student body. Being human it is also valued by teachers and others in education as well. While students typically have only such authority as adults would approve the empowerment of agreement is separate and potent. Even students are people and what is valuable to students is valuable to parents and valuable to the public that employs educators. Where the value is basic and is human students can be empowered through enlisting others to value result. You are already powerful. Consider the cultural education demands placed on your parents and grandparents. And that the purpose of education was preparing children for being effective people and that what educators were trained and educated to do sees to the advancement of humanity. They were prepared to step into a world of competition and conflict and to survive and prosper in spite of what others seem to intend on doing. The lesson for you is that they survived. They survived the educational and then went on to live their lives. What this course of study has to offer is an alternative. Human empowerment is optimized in the direction of intelligent investment with recognition that it is going to be personal with you even as it is with your classmates. It is not learning to survive in a hostile world. It is learning to join with others in putting a harness on civilization itself. It is learning that there is much more from being effective in your dealings with others than from trying to seize upon a good piece of what is offered. What will parents think of this? Will they? The real customers of education support you in gaining this opportunity? Will they support a mandate that will widen or better focus education you are able to gain? The human answer is that you are the parents of tomorrow. You are the grandparents of the day after. The real question is how you will harness our humanity to serve people. What will you learn to see as an even more effective way to prepare your following generations? By being human you are investors in the educational process even as you continue today as its beneficiaries. Who can you trust to take part in this? And the answer is that everyone can be trusted to be human. And you cannot go anywhere as humanity without taking everyone else with you. You can pretty much trust anyone who can come to see the same value result that you would pursue and accept that you have a reasonable way to pursue it. You can trust that people are going to spend their lives doing something even if it is avoiding doing things. While you cannot make decisions for anyone other than your own children you can support others in their choices. You can provide the best information you have concerning the costs and probable outcomes of the options that life presents. You can support them in the choices they make. You can provide the benefit of the visionary tools you have been presented. They work as well for others than they do for you. You can address our human inertia how change will always appear to be a cost and improvement efforts are most readily available from ceasing to invest where nothing comes back to us. A large part of what you will be able to offer others from passing through the experience of this course is your own rejection of spending more and more on efforts that just do not work to the desired effect. Along with this you have come aware how our culture has become focused on and has continued to promote efforts that disempower people. You do have a unique part in this and that is as an individual a unique part of the larger humanity. Your empowerment is available through empowering others which is a choice an investment a freedom that you can enjoy. We will continue this general direction of development in the next lesson further summarizing what we have attained for the purpose of your empowerment. I encourage you to see this as technical support for you as an investor. In this case it is technical support for investing yourself in order to gain what you value and to gain what others also value to the extent they are willing to invest in it too.