Leadership Training

E-mail 7/3/09 to Ms. Alexy of Iacocca Institute:

Lee Iacocca bemoans the fate of the US. He asks, "Where have all the leaders gone?".
As Director of the Iacocca Institute, with your programs directed to colleges and universities, you are apparently well aware that leaders are generated or at least perfected through a process of education.
Limiting leadership education only to high schools and universities, I believe, does not completely address the problem of generating leaders to our best proficiency. Perhaps you have made some visits to grammar schools and observed the educational process, not the curriculum. If so, you will have seen that the public school educational process demands complete student conformity. Each student is taught indirectly that he will get along better in the school environment if he acts like every other student. This not only is an absence of leadership training, it is training in conformity.
May I recommend your program of developing leadership be extended to lower grades, particularly in public schools? I expect that your efforts will meet basic resistance from the Federal Administrative level, but I believe you will also find many school principals and teachers willing to cooperate. Local school boards may be a more difficult "sell", but I believe this can be accomplished by indicating that the will of the people is such that they do not want their children to be automatons. A School Superintendent will generally follow the philosophies and programs of a strong school board.