Task deux

Preparing children to be good little workers and servants of the "new economy" doesn't seem very much different to me than training them to be the good coal miners, seamstresses, and assembly line workers of the past. The way those workers were exploited by the robber barons and industrialists of the early 20th century, today's workers are cogs in the world's economy. Consider what has happened in the past five years: a few large unregulated banks helped themselves to enormous profits before and after a collapse they caused by passing around toxic debt around like a bomb that, when it finally detonated, blew gaping holes in the world's economy. Now, lots of well-educated workers with or without university degrees can't find work and many have become discouraged at the bleakness of the job market. This is not to say that the economy won't come around, but I believe the cycles of dizzying booms and devastating busts are going to continue until Wall Street is regulated. (The chances of such regulation ever happening depends on your view of human nature. I find it hard to believe that Washington politicians whose campaigns are funded by banking lobbyists will ever willingly enact regulations that hurt their paymasters.) The way to insulate our students from this is to help them find their passions and nurture their creativity.

This sounds flighty, but bear with me as I explain why it's not. If we accept Ken Robinson's definition of creativity as the process of thinking up ideas with real value, then schools should be dedicated to producing these thinkers rather than stamping out more workers for corporate America. They are a dime a dozen and get treated accordingly. Robinson's point that we won't know what the future will look like was no great insight. Short of fortune-telling or time travel, how would we? But regardless of the direction the world takes, great ideas will always be valued. (Consider someone like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, for instance). Yet they will only be discovered if given the room to grow. A case in point is the story of Gillian Lynne that Robinson shared. The life of this fidgety kid could have gone either way; it seems to me that we need to restructure education so that kids like Lynne succeed because of what we do rather than despite it.

In terms of the debate between Standards and Skills, I think it is a false either/or choice and should be rethought so that we use both the former and the latter. Imagine an uncharted desert island as the future of mankind. The lifeboat that washes up there crewed by graduates who know lots of information they can't apply or who aren't able to work together won't survive long. Conversely, if the crew is technically capable but fact-poor they will suffer as well. (Maybe they can create handmade fishing spears and ways to harvest coconuts, but die because they didn't know they needed to eat citrus fruits to combat scurvy.) In any case, my point is we need to encourage creativity and strike a balance between Standards and Skills. I don't presume to have the answers on how to get there, but I know it is the right destination.