Feb 17 2008
Education in a Flat World
Ian Jukes’ blog reports a great interview with one of my favorite authors, Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat). He’s interviewed by Danial Pink (author of A whole New Mind). The interview appeared in the February 2008 edition of The School Administrator.
To quote a portion of Ian’s summary:
Liberal arts are more important than ever. It’s not that math and science aren’t important. They still are. But more than ever our secret sauce comes from our ability to integrate art, science, music and literature with the hard sciences.
Left-brain thinking — rule-based, linear, SAT-style thinking — used to be enough. Now right-brain thinking artistry, empathy, narrative, synthesis — is the big differentiator.
If kids don’t know how to navigate — to know if something is really true and not just to grab the latest thing off Wikipedia — they’re going to have a problem in life. They need symphony, which is the ability to fit the pieces together.
Integration is the new speciality. Right now we frog-march kids from math to science to English — and too rarely make the connections among the disciplines.
CQ + PQ > IQ. Curiosity Quotient plus Passion Quotient is more important than Intelligence Quotient. Show me a curious, intrinsically motivated kid — and I’ll show you someone who’ll leave the kid who merely complies with the rules and studies for the SAT in the dust.
You can review Ian’s discussion of the article here and access the eight page interview here. If you haven’t read Friedman’s book, check out this article. Then go get his book — it’s THAT important.
