education (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)
A good friend of mine has been home for the holidays. This good friend I see once every three years because of the nature of his work and life choices he has made. In usual fashion the few times we have seen him over his holiday break we caught up on our life stories while reminiscing over the past. While social media is shortening the time we take to catch up the last three years, the reminiscing over the past seems to go forever! (Maybe we are just getting old!) This time we took a trip down memory lane of our high school years by visiting the school and having a walk around the campus. And while it was fun to check out our old haunts, discuss memories of all those firsts that you do at high school, the discussion did have a more serious side.
It surprised me to hear that my good friend very nearly didn’t finish high school. Now if you knew my friend you would know that he is a very successful entrepreneur. He has come up with many ideas, some of which have come to fruition, some of which have been sold and some of which thank goodness they died way back when! This discussion has had me thinking a lot. This discussion hit a nerve in me. This discussion along with a number of blogs I’ve read lately really has me concerned with how as educators we don’t cater to all students needs.
We educate the students who want to become lawyers, accountants, scientists, teachers, doctors, you get the idea. We forget that we also educate students who will be singers, dancers, sports men and women, plumbers, carpenters, again you get the idea. While this group is somewhat educated by us in the basics of literacy and numeracy we neglect to teach them the skills they need to do what they want in their trade. And this group need to perfect their skills if they are going to succeed at their craft. The second group we forget to educate are those students who will be entrepreneurs. This is the group that the current school system (regardless of where in the world you are) is never going to teach them anything. This is the group of students who know they have all the information they need on the internet. This is the group of students who when they want to learn something go and learn it without the need of teachers or someone telling them what to do. These are the group of kids most educators classify as “Up to no good” or “Lazy” or even worse “Will never amount to anything”… And yes my good friend was labelled all of these things while he was at school. These are the kids who create their own products and businesses all before they leave school.
These are the kids who need to be given the task to solve a real world problem, told this is your deadline, and told let us know when you need assistance… Find them a mentor or act as their mentor… Ask these children to design their own curriculum and their own marking rubrics. These are the children which will change the world… The Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and the Mark Zuckerberg‘s of the world…
How can we better cater for these students? How can we can we give these students the freedom to create their own education? So that we don’t cause them to feel they need to drop out of high school in order to start their life’s work…
- Young adults as entrepreneurs (20somethingsin2012.wordpress.com)
- I Must be Lazy (Cooperative Catalyst)
