Developing Education 2.0

Smart People Magazine brings an interesting look about our systems of education and the extent to which they lack the necessary tools to educate the Millennial Generation.

Sure schools need technology that is better, but beyond that the process of education, they say, is outdated.

"There's a commonly told story... if a doctor from the 1890s were to suddenly be time-warped into a modern twenty-first century hospital, he would not recognize how patients were being healed. The same would be true of office workers, farmers or most other professional or occupational environments. However, if a schoolteacher from the 1890s were to step into many of today’s classrooms, he or she could easily pick up where she left off."

Names and dates, dates and names, fill in the bubble.... next?

I can't help but agree. The piece calls this the industrial model of training our young people, like little cars rolling through the line, we stick a fender on them and move forward never actually looking at practical results or ... actually... really anything practical.

The only place I learned how to craft a resume was in my high school drama class - no where in college was that skill available. No one taught me how to fill out a FAFAS, how to search for scholarships, what I needed for scholarships, how to apply for college, what I needed for college.

Names ... dates.... fill in bubble... next?

"According to the Digest of Education Statistics: 2007 (latest data available), 55 percent of public school teachers in the U.S. had at least 10 years of experience. At best, they received their professional education when DOS was still a prevailing computer operating system. A quarter of U.S. teachers had at least 20 years of experience. . . The same report indicates that school administrators have an average of 21 years in the education field."

Oy. We're not preparing young people for the future. Forget about this idea that a majority of jobs that will be available to youth aren't even created yet, we're not even preparing youth for today... right now, much less the future.

"In 2008, The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a coalition of almost 40 corporations, commissioned a survey of employers from across the U.S. to identify the skill sets that entry-level employees need for today’s workplace.

Asked to rank the skills in order of importance, they indicated that professionalism, oral and written communications, teamwork and critical thinking now trump reading comprehension. Certainly this does not mean that reading is less important than it was. The opposite is true.

What it indicates is a dramatic shift in the workplace, which now values the employee’s ability to self-direct, communicate effectively, collaborate and innovate. Yet, these skills continue to be unvalued in our schools."

As my piece earlier this week ranted, if we continue to view young people as open minds we stuff with government-mandated bubbles to fill that are totally useless to our future, we will continue to see a slow downfall our world ranking of the smartest minds.

In the end we should be asking what we need our schools to do to ensure Millennials are prepared for the unpredictable future and they can function in today's requirements. As we begin to look at ways to rework No Child Left Behind and reform our systems of education, if we could possibly just remake the way we work, that'd be awesome, and I'd really appreciate it.