What can be done to produce a more educated workforce in the Southeast Valley?
The core building blocks of innovation are chaos, creativity and collaboration. Our current educational system places little to no value on any of these traits. It applies rigid structure in place of controlled chaos. It begins strip mining the creativity out of children the minute they enter kindergarten. It frowns on any form of “collaboration” and values only the end result of individual testing. To produce a more educated workforce we need to create a generation of explorers and creators instead of consumers.
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Spoken like an innovator…if only the broad sector of our educational system was in tune with this. Although, it has to stary with bite size chunks.
Excellent points, Derek. It would seem the focus is on forcing base knowledge on standardized information. It’s lowest common denominator in full effect.
I think we need to come up with ways to encourage a mindset of lifelong learning. We need to come up with scalable models which tap passions and align them with learning in order to show the value of continuous education – within and without formal education.
It might be said much of our education system revolves around reading, writing, and math, yet so many people finish high school (even college) unable to read, write, or balance their checkbooks. It’s a travesty.
If it were up to me, I’d begin by coming up with a list of skills and abilities every graduate should possess, then breaking that down into base skills and tailoring the curriculum/activities to the elementary level in order to consistently build upon them.
We have to show people – beginning in kindergarten – the value of education, tailored to their needs/wants every step of the way. “What’s in it for me?”
I couldn’t agree more, Derek. The current state of education in our country is very frustrating indeed…especially at the primary and secondary levels. As a new father (8-mth old daughter), education is something that has quickly become a topic of increased interest for me and my wife. We hope that we are able to find a traditional school that can meet our high expectations, but my wife and I understand the limitations of many public school systems and understand that if we want our children to truly be ready for the real world, we are going to have to tackle many of the gaps during our own afterschool “home-schooling.”
Has Gangplank and/or maybe Stealthmode considered offering more regular afterschool entrepreneurship classes to elementary and high school students? I know the Gangplank Junior program is doing great things, so forgive me if you are already doing this. Since it is nearly impossible to make changes to the traditional education programs, I think one way to tackle these gaps in the traditional curriculum is to offer non-traditional supplemental afterschool programs to students and parents that are focused on innovation and collaboration (STEM-based?). Maybe there is an opportunity to take the Gangplank Junior programs a step further?? …and/or bring them into the school day a few times a week to supplement the regular curriculum and get the kids more engaged and excited about learning??
A couple places that may be good resources for content (and maybe financial support??) are the Kaufman Foundation (FastTrac) and maybe Babson College, the top school in the world for post-secondary Entrepreneurship education. I was fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to study business management at Babson. They live and breathe nearly everything you mentioned above…innovation, chaos, creativity, and collaboration. My experience at Babson was excellent and really helped me to see business, and the world in general, as a sea of opportunities and gave me the tools to analyze and go after those opportunities with confidence. I suspect they might be open to some sort of collaboration for curriculum/content development.
-BDS
Keagan,
The problem with slow incremental change is that we are already 15 years behind. : (
Brian,
You are absolutely correct. Our current system teaches students to consume information and store it. Using it how people tell them to. The work of the future is about creating information or manipulating existing data/ideas in interesting ways. We have to stop “teaching” in the sense of imparting already learned information and instead empower learning and creation. These are fundamentally different concepts. In a nutshell schools should be “inspiring” students. Nothing more, nothing less.
Brad,
We are actively working on a Gangplank school to compliment Gangplank Jr. We have it on our 10 year plan, but are hoping we can in some way accelerate it to happen in the next 5 years.
True, the vast majority (90%+?) of our K-12 educational system is simply fact teaching. After high school, most collegiate classes mimic this model of cram-regurgitate. Most business folk think of innovation as related to business or technology. Our educational system needs to stress that innovation can happen across disciplines. More importantly, an innovation continuum needs to be in place for new ideas to percolate to the community. In other words, programs need to be designed for K-5, Middle School, High School, College, Post-College, Entrepreneurship, and Enterprise. Entrepreneurship and Enterprise have no dearth of incubators, business books, and consultants to carry the Innovation flag. In my opinion, the key to leveraging the educational system to spur innovation is to create a continuum, have grade/age appropriate programs, and take the students from mentorship to entrepreneurship to steering the ship.