Some sensible talk about economic development and a creative environment. Was anyone listening?

I don't generally carry much water for SC ETV Radio, the state's cash-starved, uninspired public radio netwokr so lazy it even does reruns of its classical music feeds. But once in a while they can still do some good work and today on noon's Your Day- a Clemson University program- there was a really thoughtful conversation about the links between creativity and economic growth between Upstate tech guru John Warner and Dr. Bob Becker of Clemson's Thurmond Institute on Government and Public Affairs.

In a wide-ranging conversation the two discussed how SC clings to a mid-twentieth century "Branch plant" strategy of attracting factories to small towns, where locals can graduate high school, maybe get an AA degree, and then live a middle-class life with a house and a stay-at-home wife and several kids. Warren said he was surprised when one of the candidates for state superintendent of public instruction told him it was dismaying, traveling around the state, to hear how many local leaders think that past will return.

Warren extolled various independent development sector efforts in the Upstate but seemed to think the "creative class" side of the ec dev effort- making South Carolina a place young, smart, knowledge workers will want to move to- will somehow take care of itself. The missing piece there, as I've argued before in this space, is the backwardness of the political class- which, in SC, means the Republican Party. When you get a prominent state senator denouncing his own party's nominee for governor as a "goddam raghead", well, that's not gonna be very sellable to, say, Google or Starbucks in terms of getting actual people to come here and set up labs, rather than run servers and grind beans.

The two had a really good discussion about the disconnect between the money SC spends on education and the results achieved. Graduation rates are dismal and curricula have been pared down to shoving facts into students' heads to pass standardized tests, sacrificing the sorts of classes that encourage creative thinking.

Which means, if SC is ever to generate its own knowledge worker class  who want to stay here rather than get the hell out, in the short term we've got to make SC seem like a place people would want to come to- and stay.

So far, it's not working very well.

Here's a link to the discussion.