The future of education isn’t in teaching specific things to everyone that walks through the door. Sure, there are things people need to know how to do. Read. Write. Do simple math. But beyond that, most everything is available at our fingertips and that isn’t going to of style anytime soon.
Let’s frame the issue a little more than my other article.
We have a shortage of jobs. Everyone knows this. That’s the reason a main political topic is “Create more jobs.” The problem is, we can’t.
We can’t create more jobs because we have enough stuff. In fact, we have more than enough stuff and no one to buy it. We have 47 kinds of toothpaste that all do virtually the same thing. We have Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Coke with Lime. Variations galore.
What we don’t have is way to foster hope and dreams in the children of our society. We tend to single out the ones that sound crazy with their ridiculous thoughts of changing the world. We push them to achieve status by the time they are out of high school. And then we celebrate the accomplishment of graduation as if it means they have accomplished something vital to their life. What they have really done is figure out how to A) follow the rules and stop dreaming or B) suppress their dreams long enough to work their way through the system. Those are the only two options.
If they achieve A, they have become another perfect product of the system. A compliant worker for an economy that doesn’t need anymore.
If they achieve B, they might have a chance of success in spite of school, not because of it. Where we feel it should empower, it more often than not, hinders with a false sense of hope.
What this really comes down to is dreams. The system steals them away for over 13 years but the truly valuable trait in the marketplace is creative thinking on the edge. Our culture has filled our heads with status propaganda to the point that we don’t have any self worth outside of our belongings and status on Twitter.
What we need is simplification. What we need is a way to guide our children to think for themselves, strive for goodness and care for the people around them.
The interesting thing is, there is a single book that teaches all of these principles, perfectly. It’s called The Bible.