Janosz: What and how do we need to teach our young people to best prepare them for the future?

Worzel: Well, I can tell [...]]]> Last week, I posed a question to author and leading futurist Richard Worzel in a Facebook Q&A session sponsored by Canada’s The Mark News.  Below is the excerpt from the conversation.

Janosz: What and how do we need to teach our young people to best prepare them for the future?

Worzel: Well, I can tell you what they don’t need: they don’t need to be force-fed facts to memorize and regurgitate on a test, only to have them forgotten quickly thereafter. Yet this is what our education system specializes in today, even though kids can do it faster and more effectively online. Yet, there are things they need to know so they can research and assemble knowledge systematically, and that’s what we need to point towards.

Yet, what parents often mean when they ask this question is “What path can I set my child on that will guarantee their employment, financial security, and welfare until they retire?” The answer to this question is: there ain’t no such animal. But your question is still worthwhile, and is not being asked very seriously by our education system, specifically by the various ministries and departments of education.

Today’s education system should teach two things, both difficult: it should teach mental skills, such as critical thinking, creativity, research, and the ability to apprehend new areas of knowledge quickly; and secondly, it needs to teach context or understanding, also known as wisdom. This is hard.

How would I go about it? I’ve discussed that at great length in various columns I’ve written over the past 15 years in “Teach” magazine. I was going to provide a link to a relevant column, but something has just fowled up my website server. If you come back a little later, hopefully I’ll be able to point you to such an article. Sorry about that.

In summary, though, what learners need is to have their interest piqued, and their talents, interests and skills identified, and then put on a path to pursue those interests AS A MEANS OF educating them in the broader fields of knowledge. If we can capture a learner’s interest, then we won’t have to force them to go to school, they’ll drag us behind them because they will be so eager to learn. As it is, we force them through 12-13 years of servitude and boredom, killing much of their native curiosity.

Worzel continues: OK, my website server is back up, so here are some links:

http://www.futuresearch.com/futureblog/2010/09/14/follow-the-red-brick-road/

http://www.futuresearch.com/futureblog/2010/09/01/why-education-must-change/

Janosz: To The Ingenuity Series: Thank you for the opportunity to ask the question. To Mr. Worzel: Thank you for the thoughtful response!

Worzel: First, go ahead and repost the comments on your blog, and thanks for the interest.

I don’t take lightly how the president interwove these themes with education and our schools. I especially noted this reference to the teaching of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM): “And over the next [...]]]> About the first thirty minutes of President Obama’s State of the Union Speech tonight was dedicated to innovation, education, and infrastructure.

I don’t take lightly how the president interwove these themes with education and our schools.  I especially noted this reference to the teaching of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM):  “And over the next ten years, with so many Baby Boomers retiring from our classrooms, we want to prepare 100,000 new teachers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math.”

I admire the goal; it’s a very laudable one. However, so many people do not yet realize the power of the two middle parts of the STEM acronym and the value added to a student’s experience when they study them along with mathematics and science.  Though they are hard to find and it may not be true in every school, most schools math and science departments are staffed with people that are very capable of teaching those subjects. What we do not have is enough people to teach our students about technology, engineering, and ingenuity.

Also prominent in this first segment of the speech were themes of entrepreneurship, manufacturing, how technology has revolutionized our lives, global competition, creativity and imagination, clean energy, infrastructure, and invention.  Our students need to know about these things too, but there is really no time left in their math and science classes to learn something meaningful about these other important topics.

The president also made reference to Sputnik and how it led us to transform our education system and research and development.

If we’re going to reinvent ourselves and reinvent our nation, we cannot do it with the same education system that came out of the post-Sputnik era.  While giving our kids more experiences in learning math and science were great things to come out of that era, we need to build on that for the future. Our education system needs more in the way of instruction in Technology and Engineering, which is core to developing ingenuity of our young people.

Here where I live in New Jersey, we have set a strong foundation for these studies.  We’ve also engaged engineers, architects, industrial designers, and other professionals and showed them a path to sharing their knowledge and experience with children. Let’s build on that and truly reinvent education with study of Technology and Engineering at the core.