(crossposted to my blog)
Lately my life's parallel theme is the idea of improving education. The idea of using social media and new media, and a number of successful theories like project-based learning, etc. to help kids want to stay in school, want to learn etc.
I was reading this post by my invisible mentor, Chris Brogan:
how could new ideas change education
Chris asked the question: how can the savvy folks help education to work better than it does in the US, with the high drop out rate, etc. Sitting here in Tokyo. I bet my teaching friends would ask a similar question – I've heard it before. Chris' post has lots of great links and ideas in the comments: many people noted the importance of Sir Ken Robinson's work on the absolute necessity for creativity education. I highly recommend his TED talk below the fold, if you're interested in this subject:
Now, I have a bit of an additional take on the idea of improving education. It's not an 'instead of', it's a side-by-side. And that is improving education for seniors and middle-aged people.
Yup, that's right. Educating seniors and middle-aged people is just as important as educating kids. I don't think we can successfully have one without the other.
Of course, we have to focus on kids – they are the future. But you know what? We've been doing that. And we are still grappling, as a society with falling literacy rates, disengaged students, horrific conditions at many schools, lack of ubiquitous internet, etc. If kids are the future, they still have to navigate through a system of expectations and realities that is rooted in the past, and administered by adults in the present.
Kids' education won't get better, society-wide, until adults' education is just as much of a priority.
The people who often stop kids from being educated in creativity, in critical thinking, in compassion, in finding their own bliss: those people are middle-aged and seniors. Those people – people my age, are the people who are working in the systems that we all live in today. These legacy systems: education, health care, the economy, etc: those who set and implement policy in these systems are pretty much middle-aged and senior people whose formal education may have stopped, and who may or may not have a viable, vibrant ongoing relationship to learning continuously.
I'm not talking about going to community college to earn a degree to get a better job. I'm talking about education that helps us to self-actualize. To move ourselves – - and our kids – - forward and past the giant mental obstacles and roadblocks that are built into our legacy systems. To be aware that the nature of life has changed, irrevocably. And to see that as an opportunity, not a tragedy.
I think that it's time to focus on education for adults at the same level of care, and scale, and innovation, that so many child-focused projects and schools are built upon. Because actualized adults will clear the way for the kind of education that grows a rich, complete, human child. It's a virtuous cycle that I believe is critical to face the societal and global challenges we have now.
What do you think?