Need a job? Invent it..

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Oldgamer

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WHEN Tony Wagner, the Harvard education specialist, describes his job today, he says he’s “a translator between two hostile tribes” — the education world and the business world, the people who teach our kids and the people who give them jobs. Wagner’s argument in his book “Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World” is that our K-12 and college tracks are not consistently “adding the value and teaching the skills that matter most in the marketplace.”

This is dangerous at a time when there is increasingly no such thing as a high-wage, middle-skilled job — the thing that sustained the middle class in the last generation. Now there is only a high-wage, high-skilled job. Every middle-class job today is being pulled up, out or down faster than ever. That is, it either requires more skill or can be done by more people around the world or is being buried — made obsolete — faster than ever. Which is why the goal of education today, argues Wagner, should not be to make every child “college ready” but “innovation ready” — ready to add value to whatever they do.

That is a tall task. I tracked Wagner down and asked him to elaborate. “Today,” he said via e-mail, “because knowledge is available on every Internet-connected device, what you know matters far less than what you can do with what you know. The capacity to innovate — the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life — and skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge. As one executive told me, ‘We can teach new hires the content, and we will have to because it continues to change, but we can’t teach them how to think — to ask the right questions — and to take initiative.’ ”

My generation had it easy. We got to “find” a job. But, more than ever, our kids will have to “invent” a job. (Fortunately, in today’s world, that’s easier and cheaper than ever before.) Sure, the lucky ones will find their first job, but, given the pace of change today, even they will have to reinvent, re-engineer and reimagine that job much more often than their parents if they want to advance in it. If that’s true, I asked Wagner, what do young people need to know today?

“Every young person will continue to need basic knowledge, of course,” he said. “But they will need skills and motivation even more. Of these three education goals, motivation is the most critical. Young people who are intrinsically motivated — curious, persistent, and willing to take risks — will learn new knowledge and skills continuously. They will be able to find new opportunities or create their own — a disposition that will be increasingly important as many traditional careers disappear.”

So what should be the focus of education reform today?

“We teach and test things most students have no interest in and will never need, and facts that they can Google and will forget as soon as the test is over,” said Wagner. “Because of this, the longer kids are in school, the less motivated they become. Gallup’s recent survey showed student engagement going from 80 percent in fifth grade to 40 percent in high school. More than a century ago, we ‘reinvented’ the one-room schoolhouse and created factory schools for the industrial economy. Reimagining schools for the 21st-century must be our highest priority. We need to focus more on teaching the skill and will to learn and to make a difference and bring the three most powerful ingredients of intrinsic motivation into the classroom: play, passion and purpose.”

What does that mean for teachers and principals?

“Teachers,” he said, “need to coach students to performance excellence, and principals must be instructional leaders who create the culture of collaboration required to innovate. But what gets tested is what gets taught, and so we need ‘Accountability 2.0.’ All students should have digital portfolios to show evidence of mastery of skills like critical thinking and communication, which they build up right through K-12 and postsecondary. Selective use of high-quality tests, like the College and Work Readiness Assessment, is important. Finally, teachers should be judged on evidence of improvement in students’ work through the year — instead of a score on a bubble test in May. We need lab schools where students earn a high school diploma by completing a series of skill-based ‘merit badges’ in things like entrepreneurship. And schools of education where all new teachers have ‘residencies’ with master teachers and performance standards — not content standards — must become the new normal throughout the system.”

Who is doing it right?

“Finland is one of the most innovative economies in the world,” he said, “and it is the only country where students leave high school ‘innovation-ready.’ They learn concepts and creativity more than facts, and have a choice of many electives — all with a shorter school day, little homework, and almost no testing. In the U.S., 500 K-12 schools affiliated with Hewlett Foundation’s Deeper Learning Initiative and a consortium of 100 school districts called EdLeader21 are developing new approaches to teaching 21st-century skills. There are also a growing number of ‘reinvented’ colleges like the Olin College of Engineering, the M.I.T. Media Lab and the ‘D-school’ at Stanford where students learn to innovate.”

Link to article
 

Moonbeam

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Nov 24, 1999
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This is an interesting notion to me, learning to innovate. I would think it's a bit like getting conservatives to think. How do we evolve as people? What is a better way of seeing or doing things? What are the properties of a mind willing to find out.

To me the most important skills a person can acquire in this regard, are the ability to resist and eliminate personal conditioning by insight into knowing what we feel. I believe we blind ourselves with false assumptions and don't even know that we have made them.
 

Doppel

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Feb 5, 2011
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“We teach and test things most students have no interest in and will never need, and facts that they can Google and will forget as soon as the test is over,” said Wagner. “Because of this, the longer kids are in school, the less motivated they become.
This succinctly captures the majority of my childhood in school. Time wasted on bullshit of no interest to me, of no relevance to my employment now, and at the expense of things that I would have enjoyed but never got the opportunity to experience because I was having arbitrary junk forced upon me. I'm no special case, though; most children suffer this fate to a degree.
 
May 16, 2000
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I think this overlooks a major warrant: what is the purpose of school.

If people believe school is about preparing people to work, then likely the ideas posited are sound. If people believe school is about educating...about teaching how to think and providing a common body of shared knowledge from which to establish a culture, then perhaps the ideas offered aren't necessarily the best.

What's important is realizing that there ARE differing answers to that question, all with merit. Perhaps the answer is each to their own, or perhaps it's a compromise...say, k-8 to educate, 9+ to prepare to work if desired, or to further education if preferred. I don't know the answer, but I know it will be different for each person.
 

nextJin

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Apr 16, 2009
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I think this overlooks a major warrant: what is the purpose of school.

If people believe school is about preparing people to work, then likely the ideas posited are sound. If people believe school is about educating...about teaching how to think and providing a common body of shared knowledge from which to establish a culture, then perhaps the ideas offered aren't necessarily the best.

What's important is realizing that there ARE differing answers to that question, all with merit. Perhaps the answer is each to their own, or perhaps it's a compromise...say, k-8 to educate, 9+ to prepare to work if desired, or to further education if preferred. I don't know the answer, but I know it will be different for each person.

You have a point, but imo I think schooling should be to set people on a course for life skills. It should be setup in a way that from 7'th grade on you should choose the classes you are interested in (other than the basics like Math and English). Even then math gets to the point where you will never use some skills past a certain point so I have no idea.

One thing everyone should be able to agree on is that our schools are broken and not from a lack of money or government oversight.
 
May 16, 2000
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You have a point, but imo I think schooling should be to set people on a course for life skills. It should be setup in a way that from 7'th grade on you should choose the classes you are interested in (other than the basics like Math and English). Even then math gets to the point where you will never use some skills past a certain point so I have no idea.

One thing everyone should be able to agree on is that our schools are broken and not from a lack of money or government oversight.

Another perfectly valid preference. Just illustrates my point that we need options more than 'answers'.
 

AreaCode707

Lifer
Sep 21, 2001
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I find this to be a very insightful and valid set of perspectives.

I work with people every day who seem to stare blankly at the dots in front of them and can't draw the line between them. Anyone I find who can connect the dots and draw probablistic conclusions, even if the conclusions are wrong on the first few tries, immediately makes my good list.

Someone who does that and helps others and starts finding patterns and begins looking for ways to reduce the dots AND maintains a professional good attitude throughout, well, that's someone I consider high potential. I will absolutely help that person advance their career. In the last six months I've helped three people get promoted either cross division or serious level/responsibility jumps because they show skill at putting the pieces together, following the breadcrumbs and getting solutions, and because they are willing to do the right thing even when it isn't necessarily in their box of responsibilities.

Do a great job and you can create yourself great jobs. Just be willing to start with something kinda boring-sounding that has limited responsibilities and opportunities. Be excellent, make your own.
 

Oldgamer

Diamond Member
Jan 15, 2013
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I found the article to spot on. I do think we need to approach schooling differently with our children. In fact I think teaching someone how to think "outside" of the box is something that is rarely taught in my opinion in schools. Everything early on is "learning by rote", and not necessarily thinking a problem through to an end result.

We need to encourage more innovative thinking in our kids. I think schools should restructure and start teaching skills that really will be used in the real world.
 

PokerGuy

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Jul 2, 2005
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Good luck trying to get the teachers union to agree to any kind of changes to education.
 
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