Educational complexity in the global village
Did you know…
If you are “one in a million” in China, there are 1,300 people just like you. In India the number would be over 1,100. The 25% of the Chinese population with the highest IQs exceeds the entire population of North America. In India that number would be 28%. The translation for teachers and parents – they have more honor students than we have students. And if we exported every job in America to China, they would still have a labor surplus.
Did you know…
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, today’s high school student will have 10 to 14 jobs - by the time they are 38. One in four U.S. workers currently works for a company they have been employed by for less than one year. One in two has been with their current employer for less than five years. On top of that, the top ten in-demand jobs for 2010 didn’t even exist in 2004.
Did you know…
There are over 2.7 billion Google searches done every day, and the number of text messages sent and received in a day exceeds the population of the planet. There are over 3,000 books published daily, and the amount of technical information available doubles in less than two years. Predictions are that by 2013 a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computational capability of the human brain, and that by 2023 a $1,000 computer will do so.
So today’s schools are preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, which will use technologies that haven’t been invented yet, to solve problems we haven’t even identified as problems yet.
But America’s schools are not just about technology and jobs. We understand that many kinds of thinking and imagination will be needed in the future; and we hope that our children will be excited and fulfilled as well as employable. So we teach music, and dance, and art. We offer carpentry and culinary arts in our schools; not in industrial apprenticeship programs as much of the world does. We provide both casual and competitive athletics in our schools, something that is uncommon in the rest of the world. Add to that home economics; driver’s ed; drug, tobacco, and alcohol awareness; character education; obesity prevention; and a litany of other subjects that compete for time and attention in our schools.
Finally, unlike almost every other country, we ask our school system to reach and teach every child, regardless of physical, mental, emotional, socio-economic, or cultural barriers.
Does that sound like we’ve created an impossible situation for our schools? Well, I remember when John F Kennedy said that we would commit to putting a man on the moon in less than a decade. It sounded outrageous, impossible… and I remember when it happened. So I don’t believe that reaching all of these goals is impossible. It’s just very, very, very hard. Setting high goals, especially when they involve our children, requires of us a commitment to creativity, dedication, honesty, and the plain hard work that will be needed to get it right. Of course, the Apollo Program had one goal, getting to the moon. Education has as many goals as there are students.
The complexity and urgency of the education issue is why I an so glad and grateful that the Observer-Reporter and Dawn Keller have begun this public conversation. As they say, all of us are smarter than any of us.
If you are “one in a million” in China, there are 1,300 people just like you. In India the number would be over 1,100. The 25% of the Chinese population with the highest IQs exceeds the entire population of North America. In India that number would be 28%. The translation for teachers and parents – they have more honor students than we have students. And if we exported every job in America to China, they would still have a labor surplus.
Did you know…
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, today’s high school student will have 10 to 14 jobs - by the time they are 38. One in four U.S. workers currently works for a company they have been employed by for less than one year. One in two has been with their current employer for less than five years. On top of that, the top ten in-demand jobs for 2010 didn’t even exist in 2004.
Did you know…
There are over 2.7 billion Google searches done every day, and the number of text messages sent and received in a day exceeds the population of the planet. There are over 3,000 books published daily, and the amount of technical information available doubles in less than two years. Predictions are that by 2013 a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computational capability of the human brain, and that by 2023 a $1,000 computer will do so.
So today’s schools are preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, which will use technologies that haven’t been invented yet, to solve problems we haven’t even identified as problems yet.
But America’s schools are not just about technology and jobs. We understand that many kinds of thinking and imagination will be needed in the future; and we hope that our children will be excited and fulfilled as well as employable. So we teach music, and dance, and art. We offer carpentry and culinary arts in our schools; not in industrial apprenticeship programs as much of the world does. We provide both casual and competitive athletics in our schools, something that is uncommon in the rest of the world. Add to that home economics; driver’s ed; drug, tobacco, and alcohol awareness; character education; obesity prevention; and a litany of other subjects that compete for time and attention in our schools.
Finally, unlike almost every other country, we ask our school system to reach and teach every child, regardless of physical, mental, emotional, socio-economic, or cultural barriers.
Does that sound like we’ve created an impossible situation for our schools? Well, I remember when John F Kennedy said that we would commit to putting a man on the moon in less than a decade. It sounded outrageous, impossible… and I remember when it happened. So I don’t believe that reaching all of these goals is impossible. It’s just very, very, very hard. Setting high goals, especially when they involve our children, requires of us a commitment to creativity, dedication, honesty, and the plain hard work that will be needed to get it right. Of course, the Apollo Program had one goal, getting to the moon. Education has as many goals as there are students.
The complexity and urgency of the education issue is why I an so glad and grateful that the Observer-Reporter and Dawn Keller have begun this public conversation. As they say, all of us are smarter than any of us.
Labels: 21st Century Skills, educations goals, future, global
posted by Kathy Smith at
12:58 PM
6 Comments:
Thanks Kathy. I hope that as more people find out about this blog, we can have a creative and interesting conversation about education. It seems to me that a lot people out there could have excellent input and I look forward to hearing from them.
Unfortunately, classes such as art, music, shop, home economics, business, etc., are being pushed aside in favor of those that are necessary under NCLB. In other words, the schools no longer can offer variety, but must spend the time teaching the test. This is my favorite bad thing created by the other president and hopefully it will be fixed by this one.
Dear "amom"
It's true that far too many schools have made the choice to narrow the focus to tested subjects only. There is nothing in NCLB that says schools must do that, but limited resources and long-established ways of looking at thing seem to have resulted it "teaching to the test". Maybe a future topic for discussion can be about ways to "teach for excellence, and let excellence fix the test scores". I know that there are many, many teachers who work toward that every day. We all can learn from them. Thanks for caring enough to read & comment!
I like th fact that you have people with a variety of backgrounds writing for the blog. This will hopefully bring all stakeholders together for the best interest of the students.
What I have seen in the short time my eleven year old has been in school is that more and more of the programs our students need have been taken away from districts. The mass majority of programs that do get added each year are for PSSA preparation. I'd love to see programs for the students that are passing the PSSA's being brought into the schools.
I believe that the students that are proficient suffer greatly. I also believe they are held back until the rest can catch up.
I realize the main reason is finances. But at what expense? At what child's expense? How can we say our children are being prepared for the future when the art, music and industrial art programs are vanishing from our schools?
I believe that if schools truly want to get with the times that they need to introduce foreign languages to the elementary level.
No Child Left Behind, while needed in many respects, has actually done the very opposite of what it was designed to accomplish. I feel that average to above average learners are being just that, LEFT BEHIND.
There is no more thinking outside the box and no exploration of creativity allowed.
The districts have not created this situation for themselves but they are required to abid by the law. In return our children's education is being restricted and often diminished.
I'd love to hear from lawmakers on ways they are trying to improve No Child Left Behind. It seems to me that those that design these laws and those that sign off on them actually aren't aware of how many students are being Left Behind. It would be nice to know that someone truly does care and would actually listen.
~Michelle Hertig-Sperl
This "Did You Know" is actually a video that has been making its way around the internet for at least a year now. Here's the link- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqt0D49i76o
What struck me most about the video is the fact that we are supposed to be preparing students for jobs that don't exist. Yes, this means that it is impossible to give children everything they need because how can we possibly do that when we don't know the future. However, this is no different from any other generation. I am sure our grandparents or great-grandparents never imagined having hundreds of channels on a talking box right in your living room or phones so small you could carry them in your pockets yet somehow these things were created with the education that previous generations received.
I believe the reason why this was possible is because imaginations were not stifled. They were a thing to be cherished. Science, geography and yes, even spelling, were just as important as reading and math. It used to be commonplace for the average person to know how to play an instrument. Sure, not everyone wrote concertos but they could at least play a few songs that the family could gather around and enjoy. The end result of a public education was a well-rounded individual. This is no more.
We are starving our future inventors in today's schools. Yes, it is important to get the basics down and many children are not doing that so they require extra classes and tutoring but as Michelle said above, it is the children who are already succeeding who suffer the most from this. We aren't just leaving those children behind but killing our own future before it even has a chance to happen.
Children need to be exposed to the arts, science and history if we ever expect them to flourish into the brilliant minds of tomorrow. If we don't give them what they need and nurture their imaginations then who will invent these things in the future that we can't even imagine today?
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