THE ‘REFORMERS’, ‘RE-IMAGINERS’ & ‘RE-INVENTERS’ FIDDLE, WHILE OUR 21ST CENTURY KIDS BURN!
In a new age, they offer no new path. All they do is tweak the old.
IN THE AGE IN WHICH WE LIVE there are two huge transformations happening to humanity. One is the change in our climate; the other is the change in our capabilities. The question is which will win. If the climate change wins, many or most humans will suffer or perish. If the capabilities win, we will still have a different planet, but one we can live on. I am an optimist. Although I see the great dangers, I believe our rising generations can adapt. But our young people are not being helped by our self-styled education reformers, re-imaginers, and re-inventors—who are, in fact, preventing what we need. What we need is to unleash the power of our two billion kids to quickly adapt to our arriving future.
That today’s adults have so far failed is clear: The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are nothing but today’s adult generation’s “epic fails.” There is not enough food or clean water for all, no equality, huge amounts of deadly pollution—and accelerating climate change.
Our planet has a whole lot of poor people and relatively few well-off people (with, in most places, few in between.) The rich and powerful make noises about saving the planet, but don’t apply the resources to do so. The barrier is not having the resources—we collectively have enough to at least do something—it is whether enough of the people who have access to resources can reach a consensus and take action. Despite attempts by the UN and various pacts and agreements, it isn’t happening—a conclusion just loudly trumpeted by The Economist magazine on its “Say Goodbye to 1.5°C” cover.
The Last Pre-Internet Generation Won’t Fix the Problem
My strong sense is that with the generation now in power it won’t happen. Those people all come from a world of individual and national “possessions,” a world of fighting for what you have and want. That world is a product of the world education system we now have. It is a world in which we rank countries—and our kids’ supposed “learning” in those countries—against each other, as the OECD does bi-annually. We are so used to hearing education praised as an engine of progress that we are now shocked at its sudden lack of usefulness.
Our current education system is useless in helping humans quickly adapt to climate change, which is—by far— our most pressing problem. That problem will not be solved by “tweaking” our education systems to make them better, or fairer, or anything else—they are the systems that got us to where we are. They are based on individuals mastering various elements of our past knowledge-base so that they can, years later, contribute and possibly invent. They worked for their times.
But There is No “Getting things Done”
But our systems lack a now-crucial element: “getting things done in the world.” Although it may still matter to some individuals, it no longer makes any difference to the world’s future whether we give everyone an equal chance to succeed academically—because academics are no longer the path that works. Piling more and more onto our artificial academic context—more social-emotional learning, more arts, more character, citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity, and even more critical thinking and academic “PBL projects”—is not a helpful solution. Nor is making academic assessments “mastery-based” because as one student puts it, “you forget either way.” Despite a great many teachers’ hard work and hopes, academic studies are just not something everyone—whatever their gifts—can do well. But, far more importantly, academics are no longer what we—and our young people—require.
What we need now are people who can get useful things done. That has to include all the two billion humans who are now under the age of 20. What everyone on the planet CAN DO is to set themselves useful, real-world goals they care about, and work to reach them. That is as natural to humans as speaking—everyone can do it at some level. But as with speaking, how well and usefully they do it often depends on us.
Our young people already live in a new world, vastly different from ours. Communities of interest are world-wide. Language barriers are on their way out. People play and work together online, connecting instantly around the globe. Most importantly, today’s young people have the capabilities to take collective action that was never possible in the past.
Today the Greta Thumbergs of the world can reach out to every young person on the planet and ask them, for example, to leave school for a year and work on projects more useful to humanity. Do they realize they have this power? Not yet. Will they figure it out and use it to adapt to and affect the future of our planet? I don’t know, but I certainly hope so.
How?
What that could look like is now coming into focus. It is young people, in small, world-connected teams, doing real-world projects that • Fix problems (like adapting to climate change) • Realize dreams, and • Help others. It means those teams choosing their own coaches from among all the adults in the world who can and want to help them, not just from official “teachers.” It is about each team making, through their project, a Measurable Positive Impact on the planet. And it is about all those teams working in coordinated directions—directions chosen by, and coordinated by, young people.
Can this happen? Can the first horizontally-connected generation collaborate in ways previous generations couldn’t? I hope so.
Importantly, our schools are almost certainly not the places where this will happen—even though that is where the kids currently are—because there are too many barriers. We need to admit that academic education—i.e., young people spending years learning whatever in classrooms under whatever conditions—is a system that served the past, and we must now create something different. Reforming, re-inventing or re-imagining school—or education—will not work—unless those who do that go far beyond what they are writing about—and doing—today. We need new places, both real and virtual, serving every young person on the planet, where the new teams can form, work, and coordinate and have impact. There is already a generic name for these new places that I hope will eventually replace our schools— “Empowerment Hubs.” My goal is to help create more of them.
Coming next: Empowerment Hubs: What they are, and how we can create them to help young people.
Marc Prensky has authored 10 books and is the coiner of the terms “Digital Natives” and Digital Immigrants”, both now in the Oxford English Dictionary. He worked formerly at the Boston Consulting Group. His blog is THE PRENSKY PERSPECTIVE. His most recent book is EMPOWERED!: Re-framing ‘Growing Up’ for a New Age.