In one of his more popular TedTalks, Start with Why , Simon Sinek emphasizes the importance of understanding your purpose over “what you do” or “how you do it.” Understanding your “why” goes a long way to successfully communicating a shared vision (see also The Value of a Shared Vision). I am sure many of you have heard the statement, “Schools should not prepare students for our past, but instead prepare them for their future.” I think this statement helps us to understanding why we need to make the shift in our pedagogical approach, but I don’t think it tells the whole story.
Schools have been taking an approach to teaching students which has efficiently and effectively met the needs of our society. Schools as we know them have, in essence, selected and sorted students for the last 100+ years. This fact leads to educators asking the question, “Why do we need to change what we have been ‘effectively’ doing our whole career?” After all, what has changed today that our approach to teaching somehow does not prepare students for their future? We could discuss the fact that colleges are lamenting that many students are graduating high school unprepared to be successful in college or that employers are complaining that they can’t find qualified people to hire. Instead, I would like to propose that it simply boils down to one word...information.
Over the past one-hundred years schools have been hubs of information with students obtaining that information through the expertise of their teachers. I am sure you have noticed that when you were in school there seemed to be a lot more information to know than when your parents attended school. If you have kids in school or if you are teaching today I am willing to bet you have noticed that kids today, in the “Information Age,” have exponentially more information to take in and know than we did in school. Schools seem to continue to pile on the information that kids need to know generation after generation in order to keep up with all the information that is available. The sheer quantity of information is becoming overwhelming for most students which has led to this generation of young people having more anxiety, greater depression, and an all around elevated stress level when it comes to school. In short, we have reached a tipping point or critical mass of information to know. There is simply too much information for any one human being to take in and store in the manner in which we have expected in schools. As educators, we need to pivot from requiring students to know certain amounts of information, to helping them to learn how to use that information. This is why we need to make the shift in our pedagogy in the Information Age.
Tony Wagner has stated, “The world doesn’t care what you know, it cares what you can do with what you know.” Although this might come across a little harsh, I think it sums up the need for this pivot in education. To be honest, I find this shift somewhat of a relief. I think we have all felt the pressure from trying to cram more information into our students in the same amount of time they have had in the past. By shifting from requiring students to know information to helping them learn what to do with the information they know we are able to slow down and give ourselves permission to not simply cover the content. This new “why” will then help us to work together to figure out the best way to approach teaching (the how) as we prepare young people (what we do) for their future and not our past (see also a New Narrative for Our Schools). If we, as educators, can make this first step and shift our lens from curriculum delivery to preparing young people for life we will have found a powerful purpose...a new WHY...for schools that will help guide our decisions from this point forward.
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