Schools, Factories, and the Art of Education
Seth Godin is nothing if he is not one to push the boundaries. By nature or training or experience, he can’t help but challenge the conventional wisdom – about marketing, about leadership, and now about education. Earlier this year, Seth released a free ebook called Stop Stealing Dreams, describing the plight of our education system and proposing a variety of solutions.
Below is his recent TEDTalk that draws from the book. One of his mantras, like that of Sir Ken Robinson, is that schools as they are currently organized are not designed to nourish creative or independent thinking but instead teach conformity.
Whatever you may think about Godin’s premises and conclusions, you may wonder, as I do, how education seems to have fallen off the national radar. Several elections ago, we had a presidential candidate boasting of wanting to be “the education president.” Today, we hardly hear it mentioned. Which is odd, because the quality of our educational system is one of the best predictors of the economic prospects of the next generation. So while our attention is rightly focused on questions about the economy today, if we ignore education we will be facing these same economic problems or worse tomorrow.
So as you approach the election, you can ask two questions. First, ask, as Godin does, “What is school for?” Second, ask, “What are the candidates saying about education and which one seems most likely to support schools that prepare our kids for a future we can’t possibly imagine?”
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