Keeping Up With The World

If the school system does not restructure its schools, its classrooms, its curriculum, and its delivery of instruction, we are in for a world of hurt. The students are our future. The world requires students to learn a variety of new skills and habits that never before mattered or existed. They will need to know how to create new worlds, or at least adapt to new ones extremely quickly. They will often be changing themselves mentally and physically to respond to challenges. They will turn information into matter and matter into base information on the fly. They have to be able to work without direct leadership in tight temporary organizations that will act independently. Many future skills will relate to mind-machine interfaces. They will all need to be data analysts. The ability to tell a good story will be valued over spreadsheets, graphs, and data points. They must be ready to become “shallow experts” very quickly on many different types of software, platforms, and services. “The biggest foundation skill the new workforce will need is the ability to develop a working knowledge of new systems in very little time, either to fulfill the expectations of their job, or to work with the specialists who will” (Enna, 2014). With how fast the world changes, students need to learn skills on how to adapt to it as quickly as possible. Students need to learn as soon as possible on how to be self directed learners. With a world with limitless information, they need to know how to tap into it as efficiently as possible, and expand their knowledge without the aid of a teacher. They need to be able to stay ahead of the person next to them. “[T]he product is learning and not the degree, in which case free content on the Internet will become a real source of competition” (Bowen, 2012, pg 226). Stanford, MIT, Khan academy, are a few schools that offer, free online courses. But without the skills to take on life long learning, these resources are useless. I used to give my son different monetary values for each letter grade he received, A=25$, B=15$, C+=10$. I have realized that letter grades are not what is important, especially for a kid who struggles with standard assessment techniques. Now, I give him 50$ for every educational book he reads, and writes a report on. I do not judge him, or grade him on his quality of the report, but I look to see if he has learned something. Did he take something away from his readings? Did he expand his knowledge? Not only is he learning new skills that they do not teach in school, he is learning what interests him, he is learning how to take education into his own hands. He is keeping up with the world.