21 May ARE THERE CHANGES YOU WOULD SUGGEST?
Guided Response: Respond to at least two of your classmates by offering a critique of their ideas. Be sure to also respond to any questions that your instructor might pose.
-Given the idea that we need to prepare our students for a future in which there are many uncertainties, including which jobs will be of importance or even in existence, is the way in which teachers are gaining leadership opportunities contrary to this thinking?
In his video presentation, Tony Wagner makes many good points, and what is most extraordinary is his observation about what we teach students about life; he specifically refers to the concept that we all be good consumers and whatever you do, please, please don’t ever rock the boat. This is not at all surprising to me, because a few years ago, through reading a long forgotten magazine article, I learned about John Taylor Gatto, a former teacher in the New York City Public school system. The article may be forgotten, but Gatto’s book is not (Gatto, 2009). Gatto writes from the perspective of someone who has been in the trenches for a very long time and Tony Wagner says nothing that Gatto also doesn’t say, yet Mr. Wagner is now delivering TED talks while Gatto couldn’t find a publisher in the United States; thus, it seems that maybe these ideas are finally, at last, catching on in mainstream thinking.
The world is in a state of change, it always is, always has been and always shall be, as change is simply part of existence; however, this change seems to be more fundamental, and, more importantly, far, far quicker in occurring than anyone would have previously thought. The educational system is massive and trapped in its own inertia, while the innovators seem to have been the drop outs who think for themselves; recall the joke about being not just a dropout but a Harvard dropout. I can see at least some advantage to this: the drop out who becomes an innovator is not trapped in as much of the thinking that those who stick around to graduate are. The dropouts’ thinking is nimble and while this writer sees the value to understanding the periodic table and Plato’s allegory of the cave, to name just two topics that often crop up in a general, well-rounded education, neither of these topics were relevant in creating Microsoft, Google or Facebook. Thus, the concept that the way in which we do things is “correct” is not, but rather, is the product of a world which is fast dying. Thus, it is clear that the opportunities and learning being presented to students needs to meet the changing world and market; an approach which is currently not in play.
If the research shows that students need to think in new ways, do you think schools foster
those skills in the way teachers are expected to operate? Are there changes you would
suggest?
Here is the problem: schools, in the conventional sense, have no interest promoting this form of thinking. It often seems that people who teach are just interested in keeping their jobs, gaining tenure and getting through life making as few waves as possible while being good consumers themselves, doing their part to fuel the economy, spending money they don’t have to accumulate things they might want, but almost certainly do not need, another point that both Wagner and Gatto make, which leads to emotional and intellectual dependency. So, it is a question of separating the essentials, as Tony Wagner mentions, and then stressing them: critical thinking, an emphasis on teamwork and a willingness to accept failure as part of the process of trial and error which is what leads to innovation. Of course, for every Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, there are thousands of people who never find that one great success, but that has been nature of innovation since there has been innovation. Further, there is some question about just what is essential in innovation and technological information may not be as critical as a knowledge of business and finance practices and schools might not be the most efficacious places for acquiring this knowledge (Frankelius, 2009).
For this reason, I would make education a process that tends to encourage collaborative activities, encourages trial and error and learns to be more forgiving of error while stress critical thinking processes, which will always be fundamental to all human activity, no matter what the field, no matter how far along we are in our economic and technological development.
References
Frankelius, P. (2009). Questioning two myths in innovation literature. The Journal of High Technology Management Research, 20 (1): 40-51.
Gatto, J. (2009). Weapons of mass instruction: A schoolteacher’s journey through the dark world of compulsory schooling. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers.
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