The Future of Business Education

If you haven't already seen it I posted a blog post on our main blog about the Future of Business Education. This post was inspired by a video interview by the McKinsey Consulting firm of Blair Sheppard, dean of Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. As the dean of the school he's feeling like business schools need to change to provide a different and better product for a new era.

Check out the post at

http://www.innovationlabs.com/2010/01/future-of-business-education/

and let me know what you think. Will business schools be able to make the necessary changes to not only keep up with the changes in society but to lead?

School Violence - Painful Lessons

It might seem that I have a negative attitude about schools and schooling. I can understand how it might seem that way since much of what I write about seems to lean in a specific direction. I'd like to offer another perspective or another possible way of seeing the things I write about.

In much of what I write about I am advocating for examining our thinking about why schools exist and trying to understand a little more about what we do in schools and schooling. I am not doing this from an academic perspective. I am a concerned citizen that would like the best for each and every young person in the world - no matter what their background, nationality, religious upbringing, or socio-economic status.

I am inspired by the fact that schools and schooling touch each and every young person at some point in their lives. As such schools and schooling would seem to have a huge potential for making positive changes in the world.

That said, the art an article a colleague of mine sent me earlier today reminded me that there are many places throughout this country where young people are not getting anything close to what could be an amazingly wonderful opportunity to learn and grow and be successful in their lives.

This article reminded me of often heard rhetoric about zero tolerance for violence and gang related activities in schools. This rhetoric often results in perpetuating and increasing violence - it doesn't reduce violence. Our actions - the actions and behaviors demonstrated by adults - in school settings (which include policies and practices) betray our real underlying philosophies. The results speak for themselves.

Personally I have zero tolerance for anything that is harmful, disrespectful, or violence perpetrated on or at young people.

For several years now I have been scanning the school oriented press and have found several subjects continually discussed which I feel deserve further exploration and/or understanding. I am often surprised by what passes as news or passes as thoughtful considerations about what to do to improve the schooling process. The amount of violence that young people are exposed to and subjected to does not decrease. Bullying is rampant - both in face to face situations and in online communities.

Most of the strategies being employed to address bullying and violence focus on reducing freedoms, reducing choices, limiting options, and controlling behavior. These strategies are not productive and actually harm young people.

The article referred to above has some pretty strong language in it about this situation. Here's a quote from the article:

Students being miseducated, mistreated, criminalized and arrested through a form of penal pedagogy in locked down schools that resemble prisons is a vicious and incredibly visible index of the degree to which mainstream politicians and the American public have turned their backs on young people in general and poor minority youth in particular. As schools are reconfigured to resemble prisons, crime becomes the central metaphor used to define the school environment while criminalizing the behavior of young people becomes the most valued strategy in mediating the relationship between educators and students. The consequences of these policies for young people suggest not only an egregious abdication of responsibility - as well as reason, judgment and restraint - on the part of administrators, teachers and parents, but also a new role for schools as they become more prison-like and more segregated as a consequence, eagerly adapting to their role as an adjunct of the punishing state. One wonders how many more kids have to be brutalized in their schools and killed outside of schools before the American public wakes up and takes seriously not only their responsibility to young people, but also their commitment to a mode of politics and a future that is on the side of young people rather than a vision shaped largely by the values of the corporate state and the disciplinary apparatuses of the punishing criminal justice system.

Here's the link to the whole article.

I know this isn't the experience at every school - but if it's happening at one school that is one school too many.

Do Schools Harm Children?

Some friends of mine are engaged in instigating a really important conversation in their community. Minority parents and students have been attempting to show how the schools are profiling certain young people as potential gang members and forcing them in one way or another to leave school - primarily to improve their drop-out and graduation numbers.

As many as 100 young people have already left one of the schools through these means.

The conversation that has begun is about developing something that will although these young people an opportunity to experience more of life and achieve some or all of their goals - while removing the typecasting and stigma of an 'uneducated' person.

I applaud this and really, truly hope that something good can come of it. It even looks like some school personnel are willing to participate in this conversation.

I know it's hard as someone involved in the schooling system to continue to want to do good - and do the best you can - while all around you there are challenges and criticisms about what's going on. Much of what's going on is not your fault. At the same time much of what is going on is actually harming young people.

Do Schools Harm Young People?

The following is part of a note I wrote to my friends in this community. This is the first time I've been public in this explicit a way with one of the most important insights I've had about schools and schooling.

I am only posting one side of the conversation here. I am not including the many emails that have gone back and forth about why this kind of thing happens (profiling and forced drop-outs) but I am posting my response which refers to how and why I believe some of this activity might come about. I am open to any and all comments and further conversation about this.

Here's part of my email:

One of the clearest and most powerful ways I can communicate about how schooling and education are different is by using the example of American Indian Boarding Schools. The methodologies used in those schools are the very same methodologies used in every public school in the United States today - in varying degrees and some less than others. We really have to understand that public schools are not healthy for young people. They never were intended to do anything like what we have talked about and what you are talking about doing this evening and with the entire community inclusion and transformation process.

The same tactics and intentions were used in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, to destroy existing native cultures and South Africa during apartheid to control and limit blacks from getting anywhere beyond the ghettos. Schools are tools for white oppressors to dominate and control the poor, native people and people of color - and anyone from another culture.

No one that I know would admit to this publicly. That's one reason why I'm only copying a few of you.

A few of the tactics that are evident (and this is not an exhaustive list) in the use of schools to destroy people and cultures are:

• taking responsibility away from the parents and family
• separating children from their homes and their parents
• forcing the use of another and non-familiar language (english)
• not allowing elements of existing cultures to be present - be it language, dress, or cultural idiosyncrasies
• celebrating sameness and removing difference
• corporal punishment and force for non-compliance
• grading, ranking, dividing, profiling, and segregating children by achievement or any criteria
• a forced and controlled curriculum
• mandatory attendance
• separating the school from the rest of the community (insulating the school from the community)
• social injustice and inequity

The racial profiling that has been discussed that is happening Capital is likely happening in every school everywhere to some degree or another. This is a natural part of the "schooling" process and one of the reasons I have harped on making this distinction so hard. Needless to say it's harmful to individuals and ultimately very harmful to society.

What Miguel has suggested for the conversation this evening - and for the larger conversation - is about helping young people feel wanted and to feel a part of something that helps them develop their own identities and self-expression while in the context of learning and serving. These few concepts are anti-thetical to school and schooling and CANNOT be a part of what we know of as school. Something else has to be created to do that.

There is one more thing for this short rave. The young people that are being pushed out and/or dropping out are the smart ones. I doubt that many people around them can see how smart they really are (although John G made reference to this in one of his emails). These young people deserve our respect and our best thinking and resources.

This conversation you will be having this evening and the ones that follow could be the most important conversations any of us have ever had. The seeds for brilliance are there.

Rates of Change - What does all this mean for public schooling?

One of the arguments I have for re-inventing public schooling is the rapid rate of changes taking place in society. Schools and schooling are the most disconnected institutions we have on the planet. By disconnected I mean, what is taking place inside of schools is disconnected from what is taking place outside of schools.

Sure there has been a push to get technology into schools - but that technology has been viewed and used under the same fundamental operating principle that is driving all schooling (control and compliance) and the methodologies technology has been applied to are the same fundamental concepts as traditional teaching (sit and get; drill and practice).

There is a large amount of data from many sectors of our economy and society that demonstrates increasing rates of change moving towards exponential rates of change. We see increasing rates of change in global population, in consumption of resources, and increasing pollution. We see the same types of changes in the use of technologies like fax machines, cell phones, computers, and the internet. The amount of data being digitized and stored on computers somewhere in the world has followed a similar curve.

Over the last 100 years the system of public schooling (including colleges and universities) has changed some but very little compared to the rest of society. This gap, which we can call an Opportunity Gap, continues to grow. The longer we wait to make necessary changes the worse it will get. And this gap actually explains a lot of what people are experiencing today in public schooling.

Every organization in the world is facing the challenge of managing within this environment of rapid change. In the competitive environment the amount of pressure on companies to adopt and stay competitive is quite significant. Product life cycles for consumer electronics companies in some competitive markets have shrunk from 18 – 24 months to around 6 months and some companies complete the entire cycle from concept, through development, through to the end of a products life in that time period.

More significant for leaders and managers of organizations (especially large ones) is having an understanding of the impact this kind of environment has on ‘how they manage.’ How you manage in an organization that is moving fast – staying up to speed with the rate of change – is different from how you manage in an organization that is moving slower. And managing a slower moving organization that is attempting to close the Opportunity Gap is different still.

Partly because of the fact that schools have been kept separate from the rest of society, and partly because of the slow moving changes within the schooling system, the managers and leaders in that environment have not felt the same kinds of pressures as business leaders. Until recently society has not demanded these leaders to have the same kind of competence. But that luxury is quickly being eroded. Pressure from the outside is growing and the skill sets of school leaders will be challenged significantly.

Here's a short video that makes the argument for re-inventing schools better than I could with pages or writing:

Schooling ≠ Education

Based on recent learning and insights I've changed the name of this blog to Schooling ≠ Education. This new name reflects the most important and critical shift in thinking that is necessary for the reinvention of public schooling.

As noted in one of the first posts on this blog, it was back in 1999 that the first ideas for writing a book emerged. This first inspiration came after visiting with a small group of teachers and having conversations about topics I had thought were common knowledge (topics I had been talking to colleagues about for nearly 20 years at that point).

I was working in a unique and powerful learning environment that reflected an integration of physical space, technology and process. During the conversation we talked about the rate of change, complexity, structures and their influence on behavior, as well as the brain and how humans learn. The original name for this blog, There is No One Right Answer, was an attempt to break through what I call "the right answer syndrome" and get people to think.

Those same topics discussed back in 1999 are still, to this day, not common knowledge - or not knowledge enough to make a difference in what we are doing in our schools. Over the last ten years I have continued to ponder why making necessary changes and improvements in schools and schooling is difficult/challenging. Today my core theory is that most people make the mistake of confusing schooling with education. This mistake is prevalent around the world, in every country, in every walk of life, in governmental circles, in business circles, in churches and religious institutions, and in homes and villages.

My theory is that real, substantive, and necessary changes will not be able to be made until the people involved in schools and schooling make the mental shift and see that schooling is not equal to education. Until that time as that mental shift is made the necessary actions and requisite behaviors will not be made.

Hence, the new name of this blog, Schooling ≠ Education.

I will be persistent in urging people to adopt this point of view and this understanding in the desire to help people see that we will never get the kind of educational experience we truly want for our children unless we make this change first.