Education Revolution

The following blog post comes from Zoe Weil on the Institute for Humane Education’s blog, Humane Connection:

Thomas Friedman’s recent New York Times op-ed, “The New Untouchables,” brings up an important point: that the failures in our educational system and the current recession are related. He ends his editorial with this:

“Bottom line: We’re not going back to the good old days without fixing our schools as well as our banks.”

The problem, though, is far more nuanced than Friedman suggests. While his essay promotes education that fosters creativity, initiative, and critical thinking — all things I agree with — there is a lack of creativity in Friedman’s own solution. We cannot go back to the good old days. Instead, we must move forward to better new days, and we won’t do that by trying to educate solely for flexible thought and innovation within current systems.

Yes, we have huge problems in our educational system that rewards rote learning over creative and critical thinking, skills now relegated to the heroic efforts of especially imaginative teachers who must figure out how to foster creativity and critical thinking when they are burdened with teaching to multiple choice tests that punish creativity. (Imagine what would happen if you took a creative approach to a multiple choice test – you’d be pretty much doomed).

But more than this, we have an even bigger problem with our educational system. We have the wrong goal. Tom Friedman wants us to return to the good old days by being more competitive in the global marketplace, a refrain that’s become cliché. The problem is that we have grave challenges to solve: global warming, rampant species extinction, desertification, deforestation, overpopulation, escalating slave labor, lack of access to enough food and clean water for a billion people, inequitable access to basic resources, to name a few of the biggies.

Making our kids more competitive won’t solve these problems unless we shift the goal of education to include graduating solutionaries for a better world. The good old days actually set the stage for all the problems we face today. They only appeared good because the problems they were causing took some time to appear. Were we to graduate a generation only with the wherewithal to compete better in the global marketplace and work innovatively in essentially the same systems, but without the knowledge, tools, and motivation to change pervasive, entrenched, and destructive systems into ones that are just, peaceable, and sustainable, we would not necessarily produce good days. We might, instead, cause even greater suffering and destruction.

Yes, we need to fix our schools as well as our banks. We need to educate a generation that understands the challenges we face and which has the skills and desire to face them and create a healthy, restored, and humane world. And when we do this, we will create new economic and production systems that bring both prosperity and peace.

~ Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind