Creativity is the new literacy, and I’ve got an anthem brewing over here… But what fires me up is that I’m not alone. So many of us are feeling this anthem right now. Times are changing. The old methods of memorization and rigid exams for a diverse student body is not working for today’s world. Those times were for the factory. But what now? The average US college student graduates with about $27,000 in debt. For what? Students in the arts graduate with the highest level of debt. For what? Student debt now outpaces credit card debt. For what?
The good news is, for those of us who came up through the traditional education system and always felt there was something off with that path, we are rapidly approaching a new era of freedom (wisdom) to learn about what excites you first…not “later” after you’ve been chewed up and spit out by the system.
Our attitudes around education and learning need to shift. It won’t happen overnight, but I applaud this spoken word piece.
Hey my friend, I like this video for the most part…except at 1:57 he makes a comment about the Mum never using Pythagoras’ Theorem. I myself being a dumb ass carpenter and never graduating a college use Pythagoras’ Theorem often enough to “memorize” it because it makes my job easier. In fact, I used it last week when I had to cut angle braces for a wall mounted shelf! Thank you high school geometry! I remember in high school making the same stupid comment as that kid in the video, “why do I have to study subjects that I will never ever use in my life?” If my teachers would have told me “because you are going to make your living as a carpenter and that requires knowledge of math, algebra and geometry, not to mention health and physical strength” then I would have listened up more.
I think everyone agrees that getting educated is a good thing but doing it on Twitter or Google is risky at best.
This my 2 cents which is all its worth. I said fuck the SAT and have not once ever regretted it or dropping out of college. I have never been held back from anything. I sold my photography business when I was 25 to travel the world. Later in Life I fell ass backwards in entertainment publicity and spent years jet setting all over the planet. When I got bored with hanging out with rock stars I went in a new direction and fell into finance with no experience. My friends were bent that I was debt free and making more in a moth than they did in a year. Now I need a new challenge, I have given away everything and am setting off top sail around the world with a life savings of exactly $3.50 I have zero debt and no credit cards. Whats my whole point? This is America, you can have and or do anything you choose. Choose your own path or be doomed to a life of mediocrity.
While I am the first to agree that school systems can be pretty soul crushing in their effort to try and conform people I do have a problem with fundamentally writing if off.
While going through uni I had a few subjects I had zero interest in but they were required to pass. I talked to the respective professors about it and they pretty much said “no problem, just do x, y and z to pass my subject.”. They respected my honesty and in essence we came to an agreement.
I now do a job that didn’t even exist when I went through uni and has very little to do with my actual studies. Yet, I did learn a number of important things at Uni. More than anything I learned that you need to know the right people and you need to be able to tell when they are trying to deliver you with mediocre results. Also, in order of 20% of knowledge to stick you need to be feed 100%.
With my own kids I find the most important thing is to stay in touch with what their interests are and then guide them into a direction that let’s them turn their interests into opportunities to stand on their own two feet when their adults. This might not be uni.
On a side note on a whole I also know that human beings are inherently lazy even more so teenagers. They will find any excuse to justify not having to do things they don’t like.
It’s like your taught as a child to be creative and then all of a sudden your told it’s not ok to be creative and that it’s not the right thing to do or be cause it’s just a ‘kid with a dream’ if you want to carry down the creative route. Definately there needs to be a change to the system to accomodate for the kids who are struggling to learn cause their strengths lie elsewhere. I was one of them kids who use to have a short attention span and got in heaps of trouble, my best results were in Design Technology and Art. I still have a short attention span. I worked at Apple for 4 years… The longest period of time I’ve spent with a company, all other jobs I left after a year max. It was the one place I could really get creative and be around like minded people. I connected the dots a while ago. I’ve been pursuing photography for the past 12 months and hope to break into this area for the rest of my time as it’s the only thing for me. Creative souls are supressed in these environments – the system just does not address this. A good friend of mine works in a school where kids have ‘issues’. These kids are bright as anyone else when their being creative and when their doing physical activities / sports. Go figure. It’s just a mess of a system, everyone has to have a category, everyone needs to be labelled. People don’t like it when they can’t label you. Times are changing Chase your right!
Alex, if your goal in life is to be just fine then keep playing the system the way it should be played. Chase is successful because he works damn hard and he broke out of the normal. He strived not to be just a little bit better than the next guy but to be bold and different. If you look art two of the greatest technological mind in history, the education system did not work for them. Neither Bill Gates nor Steve Jobbs graduated from college. Looking even farther back into history you will see the education system didn’t work for Albert Einstein either. He dropped out in 8th grade and is considered by many to be the greatest mind ever. With examples like Jobbs, Einstein, and Gates there is no doubt we should be questioning our education system. After high school we are trained to go get a degree in something that will pay or a 9-5 job and it took me a long time (nearly a degree in biology) to realize that I could chase my dream (being a photographer). Dreams should be encouraged from the very start. Not 9-5 jobs or steady income. Matter of fact we tell our youth to try to think about what they want to do for the rest of there lives, income should not be apart of the conversation. All in all, the goal is not to be fine, it is to be something better than that.
I apologize for any spelling/grammar errors wrote from an iphone on a bus
according to Wikipedia, Einstein was in various schools until he was 21. he ISnoted as having criticized the teaching style of one school, but dont think he dropped out in 8th grade and never went back to school.
but Einstein was a self starter and highly intelligent. Also this was at a time when life a little bit simpler and a plan B job was always there. These days plan B jobs are more and more shifted to low income countries in Asia.
I recently read a number of studies on child education one of them asked teenagers what they wanted to be when they entered the work force. Two of the top ten answers were “being rich” and “being a celebrity”. Say no more.
We are made to think in high school that success mean money. I wonder why any of those kid want to be rich? change education to convince kids to find the dream there passions and not to worry about money.
You are naming all the exceptions. If everyone was Steve jobs then no one would actually build the iphone. It would just be an idea.