"The Future of Schools" via Will Richardson

So back on December 5, Will Richardson posted about his thoughts on  Microsoft's School of the Future Summit. I was struck by Will's lament over how quickly he lost any sense that there was a coherent vision of the future of schools in any of the speakers' comments.

This got me thinking back to what I still think is one of the most under-reported speeches on education - Bill Gates' address  (PDF link) to the National Governor's Association back in 2005. Don't remember it? That's the one where he made the little comment that "America's high schools are obsolete."

Nice right? The richest man in the world and the head of the world's largest philanthropic endowment went on to say:

"By obsolete, I don't just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded
– though a case could be made for every one of those points.
By obsolete, I mean that our high schools – even when they're working exactly as
designed – cannot teach our kids what they need to know today.
Training the workforce of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach
kids about today's computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. It's the wrong tool for the
times"

So how do these two things tie up? First its a bit ironic to hear Will's lament about a lack of a common vision from a Microsoft summit when 3 years earlier, the former CEO of that same corporation offered a pretty clear vision about how to start the re-design process he felt was needed to change the American educational system. Agree or disagree with his vision but it could've well served as a springboard for a coherent set of discussions at this 2008 Summit.

Second, I think Gates' had it partially right when he said that the problem couldn't be solved by starting within the schools themselves but had to begin with having the political will to change. IMHO, with a problem this size, I think we have to get past the idea of incremental, evolutionary change. I think especially with problems of this magnitude - we need REVOLUTIONARY change. There are some many tendrils of the current education system that extend into so many areas, that it seems that incremental change is doomed to failure - piecemeal change efforts just can't seem to gain enough momentum before they are ground to a halt by the forces of the status quo.

This, I think requires an effort on the scale being discussed regarding the upgrading and repair of America's physical infrastructure. We need to envision a similarly broad initiative aimed at re-designing  our national educational system.

Comments

[Lori]

you know, what sticks out to me the most here is how i don't really enjoy hearing my child described as "the workforce of tomorrow".

i consider my job to be raising a person capable of finding and doing meaningful work and leading a full, happy life .. not so much one of bill's future employees.