Mar 29 2008
As the World Becomes Flat, How will We Educate our Children?
We all have those hmmm . . . moments, when we read or hear something that is particularly poignant or meaningful.
For me, reading Stephanie Sandifer’s post from her Change Agnecy blog was one of those moments.
Stephanie writes, “One of the recurring issues that came up throughout the day yesterday (at Conovocation 2008) was the issue of FEAR. Fear of loss of control, fear of the tools, fear of change, fear of the “unknown”…
And she writes. . .
“I thought the following two comments that came through on the online chat were extremely powerful counter-arguments to the common expressions of those kinds of fear listed above:
09:16 dlaufenberg : the real fear should be educating a generation of students that are not prepared to move the nation forward
09:16 dlaufenberg : the real fear should be that the ‘culture of one right answer’ will not be able to creatively solve the complicated problems that face ‘our’ future
Stephanie goes on to say, “Our current education system is not preparing kids for their futures and that is what should really make us afraid. We should be afraid that we are failing an entire generation of people who will need new skills and knowledge (skills and knowledge that we are not yet teaching them in our schools) if we hope to move our nation forward and to solve the many problems that we will continue to face in the 21st Century.”
Stephanie’s fear of not preparing our young people — and I might add our country — to compete in the world of tomorrow is one that should be shouted from the roof tops of every school house and state house in this country.
And it’s a message that dovetails into the theme commonly heard from education futurist David Warlick:
You can not attend any kind of conference today without someone standing in front of you and saying, “You must read The World is Flat,” by New York Times columnist, Tom Friedman. This enormously popular and influential work has made the case for a world that is increasingly global, where industry is crossing political boarders, and not only purchasing the natural resources of other countries, but also contracting for the intellectual talent that is located any place where there is an Internet connection.
How do classrooms, that have traditionally assumed their dominance in producing the information age workers, adapt to an increasingly connected planet, where people can export their talent, regardless of the geography? .. and what does a flat classroom look like, where learning comes less from the gravity of hierarchy and more from the construction and maintenance of a well oiled learning engine.
The question is, how do we as a county respond?
