"If we want to prepare our children for the future, we need to stop preparing them for our past.” This statement by Dan Pink, the author of A Whole New Mind, was made in an address to Achieve Minneapolis this past November.
Pink is absolutely right and this past week offers ample proof.
On Wednesday, officials at IBM announced its latest supercomputer, dubbed Watson,” is slated to challenge Jeopardy’s top two all-time winners in a contest next month. It’s unknown if Watson will be victorious but due to the inevitable march of computer processing power and algorithms it’s only a matter of time before the machine leaves man in its wake. As one IBM official said, “The technology behind Watson will change how we interact with machines and revolutionize many fields.” One of those fields is education.
On Thursday, a new ski goggle was released which allows the user to record everything she sees. The device might initially appear frivolous but, as with Watson, it is only going to get better, faster, cheaper–not to mention more stylish. Soon the technology will be built directly glasses and allow students to see exactly what the instructor is seeing. Whether it be understanding how to repair the inside of a fuel cell or the human heart, the technology holds the potential to take education to a deeper, more nuanced and interactive level.
Then on Friday Google announced the release of a new mode for its Android phones that allows foreign conversations to be translated in real-time. The technology won’t render the need to learn different languages obsolete but it is foolish not to believe it won’t alter how students reach out to their global peers and interact with the broader world.
This, of course, was just one week. It is wondrous (and sometimes a little unsettling) to think what next week, next month and next year will hold. Yet this is precisely the challenge of modern education.
The problem is that we continue try to prepare our kids to live and function in this accelerating future by treating them as a 19th century commodity. We ship them off to a big brick box to be processed on a conveyor like system that demands they be stamped into six different molds (academic courses) and cured in 45-minute increments (classes) over a nine-month period. We then repeat this for 12 years and hope they have the skills to navigate a future that is–and will continue to–shift under their feet.
What then to do?
Here’s a radical suggestion, which I call Future Friday’s. Every Friday, for the entire day, trust students to identify a real-world issue and problem and then allow them to create their own curriculum using the tools, technologies and collaborative networks most appropriate to address that issue.
Think it won’t work? Look at one of Minnesota’s most successful companies, 3M. One reason it has successfully transitioned from a mining and manufacturing company into one of the largest and most diverse and innovative corporations in the world today is because it gives its researchers and scientists the freedom to devote 20 percent of their time to work on projects of their own choosing.
Just imagine what could happen in Minnesota if we also granted our most creative asset–our students–one day a week (or 20% percent of their) to do the same?
My prediction is that we would not only better prepare them for their future; we would also help them create a future that will benefit us all.
Jack Uldrich is a global futurist and author. His next book, Higher Unlearning: 39 Post-Requisites for Achieving a Successful Future is due out this March.
