November 6, 2013
This posting is an adaptation of a speech made at the National Honor Society Induction Ceremony on November 5, 2013
For me, these last three or four days have been a time for processing a lot of ideas about the future of schools and the future of learning. On Saturday, at a retreat for the Our Lady of Good Counsel High School Board of Directors, we heard from Michael Brannick, President and CEO of the largest online testing company in the world. Then Sunday, in The New York Times Education supplement there was an article by Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn. And while students had the day off Monday, we, the teachers and professional staff, were at the Association of Independent Maryland and DC Schools annual conference in Baltimore listening to the keynote speech of neuroscientist David Eagleman.
These provocative encounters held in common a high value they placed on being a particular type of learner, one open to innovation and change.
Mr. Brannick's company, Prometric, administers more than 10 million tests a year. He cited the growing gap between the educational output of schools and what the business world needs. It used to be that school would reward you for knowing stuff like the names of dead Presidents—a feat of memory but not building to anything in particular. Today, that sort of recall of facts has been outsourced to the Internet. If you want to know who was President Buchanan's Vice President, you just Google it (by the way, it was John Breckinridge). Michael Brannick's company hires talent and that's never exclusively about knowing "stuff." He believes the "secret sauce" of a place like Good Counsel is found in developing the life skills that go with the educational skills. Today's business leaders look for young people who are not only smart, but can collaborate, take the initiative, offer to be part of the solution, energize the workplace. Acceptance into the National Honor Society is recognition of the wonderful talent of our students. We admire all the ways they are involved. Mr Brannick's message is clear—you've made a great start; don't stop. He would urge every student to seize every opportunity to get involved and develop the life skills, the adaptability, and the creativity that may just be the greatest asset a young person can bring to the world of work.
In the Times, Christensen and Horn wrote about disruptive innovation. No one wants to be on the wrong side of change. As safe and predictable as it is here at school, the futurists tell us that our graduates will have an average of 11 jobs by the time they reach their mid-30's, and many of those jobs have not even been imagined yet. The first iPad only arrived on the scene four months before current seniors started at Good Counsel. If four years is something like an eternity, then today's students had better be willing to adapt.
Christensen and Horn wrote about how the earliest commercially successful steamship traveled the Hudson River in 1807. It didn't appear to be much of a competitive threat to transoceanic sailing ships, as they were judged too expensive, too unreliable and too limited. So, sailors dismissed the idea that steam technology could ever measure up. As the technology improved, sailing ship companies tried "hybrid ships, adding steam engines to their sailing vessels, but never entered the pure steamship market. Ultimately, they paid the price for this decision. Every single transoceanic sailing-ship company went out of business." The same story could be told about the automobile. "The auto is just a fad," said Henry Ford's banker, "The horse and buggy is here to stay." We all know how that turned out. Hundreds of buggy makers went under.
What does all this mean for our students? Innovations and adaptations come at us at warp speed. There is no reason to think things are going to slow down. Stay alert. Keep your skills sharp. Pay attention. You are headed into a world where India and China have more smart people than we have people.
And yesterday, neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman talked about our brains and maximizing our human potential. A lot of things we did not understand just a few years ago are now explained in terms of brain chemistry and biology. Eagleman used the analogy of our conscious mind being no more than the broom closet in the mansion of our brain's overall capacity. He spoke of creativity as the essential brain development skill. In a competitive world, where more and more jobs require intellect, the ability to be creative may be decisive in the marketplace. Not the ability to memorize and repeat, but the ability to use the imagination.