The Death of Education, the Dawn of Learning

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

I have two kids who are growing up in a world that is vastly different from the one I grew up in… different from even 7 years ago when my older one was born. How is their education preparing them for this unknown future? How will it set them up to succeed in a changing global economy?

Bringing this closer to Substance World HQ, the world is different than it was eighteen months ago when we started Substance. So how is our education preparing us from a digital brand standpoint? How are we in the industry learning what’s new, how to do things, and how to run a successful digital brand business? Are we learning how to do better, and more importantly, why we should do better? Or are we simply learning to do “better sameness?”

Of course these educational challenges aren’t independent from each other. What we’re teaching our children will directly reflect on how the businesses of the future are run. And how our businesses are run can directly influence what, how and why our children learn. The problem, it seems, is the “culture of fear,” that the wrong answer is the wrong answer is the wrong answer.

At least that’s the standardized testing way of thinking. Standardized testing has a right answer and a wrong answer. That way everyone can be measured against everyone else. You know… standardized. The thing is, sometimes doing it wrong is what gets it right. And sometimes there’s more than one right answer. Finally, sometimes it’s hard to even define what is “wrong” and “right.” And the definition changes day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.

RSS readers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tahTKdEUAPk

The future will be fundamentally different from our past, and even from our present. The future is going to be created by, “…brave children who care about stuff like their culture.” It’s going to be kids who are concerned less with providing the wrong answer and instead approach the problem and figure out the best answer. Standardized classrooms, rote lessons and worksheets won’t teach children how to do this. Problem-solving is creative thinking, not standardized thinking.

The same thinking applies to how digital brand agencies do business. The process in which projects were completed in the past (strategy > wireframes > design > programming > launch) isn’t working in the present, and it certainly won’t work in the future.

“Forget about best practices. Best practices are usually common practices. And common practices will never add up to a zag, no matter how many of them you apply.” – Marty Neumeier, Zag

I’ve had to unlearn years of educational process in order to approach challenges in new ways. Truth be told, I didn’t have to unlearn that much… I was fortunate to have gone through an educational process that highlighted non-standardized challenges: architect a spaceship, write a short story, create a video, design a non-traditional brochure. While it’s been many years since I was in school, I’m fortunate enough to be involved in an industry that constantly challenges itself to come up with the non-standardized solution. I’m also fortunate enough to be surrounded by people at the long table who encourage and foster this kind of thinking… I like to think of the long table as a home for kids who were bored and uninspired by standardized testing.

Here’s the thing: there is no standard. There is no best practice. Everything we do today can and will change tomorrow. There’s only one constant: always do better. That’s something we follow as a guide to the future. And as stated above, not better sameness, but fundamentally better.

RSS readers: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66

The presentation above by Sir Ken Robinson from the TED Conference (anyone that wants to send me to TED next year, let me know) is an outstanding view on why our educational systems need to change, and change quickly. Public education came into being in order to meet the needs of industrialism. And for the most part, we’re exiting industrialism, and entering an era of ideas and actions. “Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” It’s talks like these that inspire us, that inspire everyone, to take action. It’s these changes to the educational system that are going to create future Substance collaborators. These kinds of changes will help encourage the people who will change the world.

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” – Sir Ken Robinson

It’s “the death of education, but the dawn of learning.” Let’s go learn.