Our Best Schools Preparing Our Children for Yesterday

Our educational system was born over 100 years ago, in order to produce workers for the industrial revolution.  Our educational system breaks the process down into distinct parts, focusing on those skills that would be useful for the assembly line and for an era prior to computers.

A child entering kindergartener this year, if that child completes what we currently think of as a 4 year liberal arts education, will not enter the work force until 2030.  We have no idea what the market and the work force will look like in 2030.  Yet we continue to train children for the 1950s.

And what does our current system of education train students for?  What is our current system of education geared for and excellent at producing?  Educators!  Students who succeed at school - students who get straight A's - go on to graduate schools, to get the highest degrees, to come back to perpetuate the self-replicating system.  It is the C students that break away and make money.  It is the drop outs that go and reinvent the entire game.

Why do we continue to train children to work on Henry Ford's assembly line?  Why do we continue to reinforce rote memorization when the entire world's library is in our pockets?  Why do we permit our teachers to be technologically 10 years behind our students?