If you talk to middle school high school, and often even college students, they will tell you stories about boring classes, reams of tests, and a growing pursuit of irrelevance. If you talk to teachers, they'll complain about disinterested students, the difficulties of teaching to tests, and at higher ed levels, a growing uncertainty that their students will have a strong foundation once handed a degree.

There are plenty of problems with the management and operation of public schools, and we need as much focus as possible on fixing them. I think these challenges are simply symptomatic of a deeper challenge - the world we are preparing our young people for is not the one they are going to face. We could cite a wide range of reasons - the financial crisis, growing economic fragmentation, the outsourcing of industry, the dislocations caused the the energy crisis, even globalization itself. It's not my job to argue on way or the other - in fact I think they are all inter-related and have a role in landing us in a world that we're not really ready for. My point is simply that we are still preparing ourselves (I speak as a college student wrestling with this obstacle with many of my peers) and our children for a 20th century economy and society, and the world have moved on.

It's just an educated guess backed up by personal experiences, but I think the 21st century economy will rely much more on creativity, flexibility, innovation, and out-side the box thinking. College grads are no longer always employable. Someone who can piece together revenue streams or start a new company that helps people with the economic crisis might be. We will still need science and engineering, and accounting and manual labor, but we will also need people who can think and work across these disciplines, integrating job, community, and life into a self-supporting career. This calls for an education that empowers and fosters the abilities and skills of every individual, rather than trying to standardize skills (not to say basic minimums are a bad idea). We need to view diversity of skills and methods of problem solving as a strength, and prepare students for change, uncertainty, and often having to innovate their own way forward in the world.

All this is simply to say that we need an education system that doesn't pigeon-hole students into the 'right' way to learn, but focuses on helping them explore and develop their own unique potential. Is it surprising that people underachieve and fail to be motivated when told what to do all the time - especially when the topics of instruction lack clear relevance. I'm not an education expert, but my own journey has been about understanding my own role, potential, and skills and pursuing the learning that expands and fulfills them. Maybe the beginning of our approach would be to assess our students visions, interests, and goals, and make the way we teach and learn relevant to them. This would probably require more listening to what individuals need, and learning how to help them better. But that's the vision, right?

For more concrete ideas, check out Montessori schools, www.excotc.org, and other learner-focused methods of education. It is probably not the solutions to all of education's problems, and we will have to figure out how to do it at scale in the public school system, but it's a start. You should also feel free to start asking students what would make their education better - they often have powerful insights when its clear we are really listening.

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