Why consider a different educational program than the one that your neighbors are talking about and that you have known of since your now middle-schooler was in Kinder garden? Why step aside from what is known and tried? Because what is known today did not even exist 20 years ago and what we know today will be replaced in the next decade. We live in rapidly changing times driven by enormous amounts of new information. Pause for a moment to inspect that last statement. It is the unique duality of both rapid changes and huge amounts of information that make this an era like none other. So staggering is this combination that the knowledge acquired by a college student majoring in a technological field will be outdated by the time she is in her junior year. Add to that the fact that the US Department of Labor expects today’s children to hold between 10-14 jobs; all by the time they are only 38 years old. Half of the working population today works for a company they did not work for 5 years ago. Enormous amounts of information that is easily accessible in an age of rapid change beckons us to consider that knowing how to handle the information is more important than knowing all the information yourself. This is just the beginning of why we might want to consider a different educational approach for our children.
Information is not the only commodity in abundance. We live in a society and a time of abundance in which most all commodities are available in abundance. Stephen Covey speaks of the 8th habit to add to his list of 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People. He cites the fact that of 23,000 working people, only about half were satisfied with what they had done in a week of work. So, while information and other commodities are available in abundance, satisfaction and happiness are not. Covey’s 8th habit is about finding your inner voice, your life’s calling. In an environment of abundance, external gimmicks are less and less likely to fulfill us. In this age, as Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind cites, we need to be searching for Meaning. Meaning and fulfillment, two words describing the same inner voice come from knowing ourselves and relying on our inner beings to be happy. Must we wait to be grown and working adults to find this voice or can be inculcated at an early stage in life? At PSCS, we believe that self-awareness comes hand in hand with the growing self.
The availability of information where we want it and when we want it is making the world a smaller place. Today’s children will have to interact with others from around the globe. In keeping with this, developing ‘Global citizens’ is the hype in modern education. What does this really mean? At its very core, being global implies being able to relate to people of all backgrounds. It is diversity in its deepest sense. The ability to connect with all people comes from starting to relate, to yourself and your immediate community before expanding out to the larger community of the globe. This can only come from being immersed in a community in which learning happens from having to balance personal needs with those of the rest of the community, where freedom, responsibility and the choices you make have real implications to those beyond yourself and that you need to factor in.
In these changing times several experts have spoken on the need for new kinds of minds and the development of new skills. The aforementioned Daniel Pink, speaks of right-brain skills being first among equals with left-brain skills. He calls attention to Design, Symphony, Play, Story, Empathy and Meaning as the critical right-brain skills of the future. In the same vain, acclaimed education psychologist, Howard Gardner speaks of the Five Minds Of The Future in his new book. According to Gardner, the Disciplined Mind, the Synthesizing Mind, the Creating Mind, the Respectful Mind and the Ethical Mind are the ones to reckon with.
In my work at the Puget Sound Community School, we have synthesized the work of these and other experts along with data on the society of the future to create a pioneering middle school program. The program will launch in Fall 2008. If this intrigues you in any way, respond with a comment to this post and I will get in touch with you.
And, take a look at these other head-turning links:
Time Magazine cover article on Bringing Schools Out of the 20th Century
Shift Happens Video
A Vision of Students Today video
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Posted by: JEANNETTELeon30 | March 29, 2010 at 03:41 AM