Bill Gates and Paul
Allen dropped out of Harvard and Washington State University to build
Microsoft. Oprah Winfrey left Tennessee
State University in her second year to become a media juggernaut. Michael Dell’s pre-med aspirations were
abandoned at 19 to start Dell Computers.
Steve Jobs couldn’t last a year at Reed College before following video
games to a pilgrimage in India where he got the inspiration for Apple. Mark Zuckerberg left Harvard after two years
to start Facebook. Oracle’s Larry
Ellison dropped out of University of Illinois and University of Chicago –
completing neither – when his CIA project at Ampex led to one of the greatest
corporate successes in modern times.
JetBlue Airways founder’s learning disability made the University of
Utah inaccessible to David Neeleman and he became a titan in the airlines. Henry Ford ended his academic career at 16
and built the largest business of his time. Buckminster Fuller was expelled from Harvard
for “irresponsibility and lack of interest.” Walt Disney left school at 16 and developed
one of the world’s most iconic media brands.
Richard Branson, Elizabeth Holmes, Adele, Evan Williams… these and
hundreds of others who have achieved unprecedented commercial success made
impulsive, adolescent decisions which shape all of our lives today.
Do these social,
technological, and industrial icons demonstrate the irrelevance of
education? No. Do they demonstrate a
fundamental challenge incumbent models of education? Absolutely.
The data is irrefutable that secondary and tertiary education offers
socialization advantages at a far greater level than it equips young people to
thrive in a rapidly changing environment.
Those who graduate – heavily indebted in most of the G-20 through their
own investment or the public subsidies upon which they rely – do earn more than
those who do not. However, Australia has
lower return on investment than the OECD average and lags the U.S. and the EU[1]. In a study of over 900 tertiary education
providers in the U.S., nearly 1/3 of arts and humanities graduates were
economically worse off than had they invested the same amount of money in U.S.
Treasuries[2]. In short, education is not serving most of
its consumers with genuine ROI. And,
employers are increasingly bearing the brunt of this social disservice – and
are noticing.
Education must
transform to be relevant. The student of
the 21st century will not be known by professional
affiliation or “proper noun” titles.
Rather the paradigm for the 21st century will take inspiration
from Buckminster Fuller’s comment:
“I am not a thing – a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process
– an integral function of the universe.”
What does this mean? First we must examine the core capabilities
of the fully functioning education ecosystem.
As the abject failure of pundits and analysts have shown in the recent
U.S. Presidential election, if you measure consensus assumptions, your
conclusions are entirely wrong.
Therefore we must examine the context in which we are commencing inquiry
and engagement rather than assuming we know that linear assumptions that are
required by consensus. In short, before
we can analyse, we must learn to sense and perceive the analyte!
Therefore, we examine the nature of the
student of the 21st century.
In a world where industrial production
STEM obsession has resulted in Japan’s over 20-year retrocession, we must have
explicit programs and experiences which challenge antiquated models of inquiry
by expanding digital and analog powers of observation. From this point, we can begin to understand
systems and formulate models to understand and critique them. This gives rise to explicit, integral value
awareness and exchange that informs the design and techno-experiential
frameworks in which we operate. This
fully sensory, fully engaged, and values-based engagement builds the foundation
for the productive and purposeful global citizen.
From this awareness, we then directly see
the emergence of a new paradigm for what would have been considered
“disciplines” or “core competencies”.
Now, rather than focusing on reifying existing assumptions, we invite
the student and faculty to engage in mutual development integrating the six
domains of functional relevance for the enterprises of the 21st
century.
These serve as our organizational
principles for the pedagogical and experiential delivery of education in the 21st
century. And this does NOT mean that we take the broken system we have and "digitize" or "virtualize" it. "Digital" learning in the 21st century is as laughable as it would have been to have "electrical" learning in the middle to latter 19th century. When when mistakes a Utility for a Social Mandate, the consequences are inhumane and destructive. STEM failed to produce critical thinkers and collaborators - it produced iPhone consensus zombies doing automatable tasks. And it ignored the ROOT (Regenerative Organismal Orthogonal Training) and the LEAF (Life Experience Application Facility). When we make the mistake of imagining only that world that industrial consumption dictates, we put our very existence in jeopardy.
Our times call for high degrees of adaptation. Our modes of education and socialization reward consensus. It's time to prune the stem and let a new shoot emerge.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your comment. I look forward to considering this in the expanding dialogue. Dave