This morning Seth Godin offers a back to school post, although he says our kids are going back to the wrong schools, ones that “churn out millions of workers who are trained to do 1925 labor”, instead of educating for a post-industrial economy.
As we get ready for the 93rd year of universal public education, here’s the question every parent and taxpayer needs to wrestle with: Are we going to applaud, push or even permit our schools (including most of the private ones) to continue the safe but ultimately doomed strategy of churning out predictable, testable and mediocre factory-workers?
As long as we embrace (or even accept) standardized testing, fear of science, little attempt at teaching leadership and most of all, the bureaucratic imperative to turn education into a factory itself, we’re in big trouble.
I wonder if the business people and entrepreneurs with whom Godin consults can or will understand the idea that our current system is broken and needs a major overhaul.
And that many of them are playing a major role in keeping it broken.
Gerry
This reminds me of Ken Robinson’s talk. We don’t need education reform because that implies a minor tweak. We need an education revolution to prepare our students for the 21st century.