This is a post I recently put up on another blog that was about Daniel Pinks Book “Whole New Mind” and whether his assertions are correct:

HI All – my 2 cents on this.

I agree with the sense that most people have that Pink’s assertion that we need to move into the 6 qualities (symphony, empathy, etc) so to create a new sort of economy is questionable, if our motivation is to fill in the gap for outsourced jobs. There are way too many dynamics for this to be a certainty. To me, the real reason to do this is to allow schools to reach the full potential of our students. As a secondary educator for over 25 years, it has always bothered me that our design of schools favors and rewards certain behaviors and tendencies (conformity, left/linear thinking) and thus underutilizes our most precious capital. I have seen far too many bright young minds settle for rote memorization, when depth and rigor could have done, seen students who could have achieved new ways of demonstrating knowledge, but couldn’t figure out how to do it within our current system.

Allow me to give an example – in Ken Robinson’s TED lecture, he talks about Gillian Lynne, the choreographer and how she was failing school until she has the good fortune to be ‘diagnosed’ not with ADHD (what might have happened today) but with a talent for movement.
4 years ago I was covering a summer school class for one week (the equivalent of 5 school weeks – 4 hours per day) in science – most kids were in to advance their course work and were amongst our most motivated and successful students (some would say they were our brightest, but that would dishonor Pink and Gardner’s point of view that they are all bright, just with different capabilities). One student in the class was Bill (name changed) and it was clear there was something different – one on one Bill was engaging, funny, very interpersonal. In a class of 20 he was always in motion, needing interaction, active. I found out he was a very talented ballet dancer at the age of 14. This isn’t a big surprise – we have a school of the arts with certificate programs in Dance, Theatre, etc. It became clear that we needed to adjust class for him, so I allowed him to stand and move around when we were doing more traditional activities like class discussions. I also knew that he learned better when he could interact more, so I allowed him to pair up with a another student who liked to talk on the fly as well. This seemed to help – he wasn’t doing great, but he was happy, productive and getting it. After the first week, I turned over the class to my cohort and found out that at the end of the course he had failed. By the fall his parents had to take him out of the school, because he was not doing well enough. I always saw this as a failure of us (me included) to recognize the diversity of ways kids CAN learn and our need to ADAPT our instructional approach to reach all students.
My school is a relatively wealthy school with lots of resources, smaller class sizes and passionate educators. If we couldn’t make it work for him, how many kids do we have in public education that are just written off and drop out or never see their true talent reached? He was fortunate that his parents had the resources and found a different school that he succeeded at – how many Bill’s are there that never do? Drop out rates in the US are over 30% – over 50% in urban areas. Is this some indication?

So Pink’s thinking for me is more about schools not laying waste to so much human potential. When the US was so dominant in the world economy, we could get away with squandering this resource. If we are to keep our economy relevant and dynamic, we need to fully develop all our students’ potential.

Most of you are probably familiar with the story of George Lucas and his foundation edutopia.org. For those not familiar, in his words:

“Public education is the foundation of our democracy — the stepping-stones for our youth to reach their full potential. My own experience in public school was quite frustrating. I was often bored. Occasionally, I had a teacher who engaged my curiosity and motivated me to learn. Those were the teachers I really loved. I wondered, “Why can’t school be engaging all of the time?” As a father, I’ve felt the imperative to transform schooling even more urgently.”

OK – Way to long a post…for any that survived to the end – thanks for listening! 🙂