Leadership Quote by Roy Romer

Romer’s flight-simulator analogy is a politician’s stealth argument for systemic reform: make the costly, risky part the capstone, not the entry fee. On the surface it’s a commonsense comparison. Underneath, it’s a pitch for reimagining public institutions - especially education and workforce training - as places that can front-load practice, feedback, and repetition without burning real-world resources or exposing people to high-stakes failure too early.

The intent is managerial and moral at once. Managerial, because “simulate almost the whole course” frames learning as a process you can design: modular, measurable, scalable. Moral, because it implies a fairness claim: novices shouldn’t have to bet their future on immediate performance in the “airplane” of real life (the classroom, the workplace, the test, the first job). Simulation becomes an equity tool, a way to let students or trainees accumulate competence before the consequences get permanent.

The subtext also carries a technocratic optimism typical of late-20th-century governance: complex human outcomes can be improved through better systems, smarter tools, and staged exposure to risk. Romer isn’t romanticizing apprenticeship; he’s defending a pipeline. Put people in safe, realistic environments first, and you reduce crashes - literal or figurative - later.

Context matters: as a politician, Romer is selling an idea that sounds non-ideological. Nobody argues with pilot safety. By choosing aviation, he borrows the credibility of a field where training is rigorous, data-driven, and publicly trusted, then quietly asks why schools and public programs tolerate so much “learn by failing” when we could design something closer to a simulator.