What School is For

In his revolutionary eBook Stop Stealing Dreams, a solution the US public education system, Seth Godin helps us understand the history of school and its relationship with the industrial revolution.

Essentially, factories needed interchangeable, fearful, obedient workers who were on time, and prepared to perform repetitive tasks. 

Schools were invented to train youth to be on time to class, follow a repetitive schedule, do repetitive work, do their homework (or else!). And it worked! Schools churned out a workforce for the labor market.

Well, the labor market has changed...but school hasn't. Here's a starter list of what school is for.

What we need today are youth who are passionate, innovative, and caring problem solvers. 

If you'd like to know how we get there, then get your free copy of Stop Stealing Dreams and READ it.

If we choose to change the system here's what we need to do:

1. Homework during the day, lectures at night.
   
2. Open book, open note all the time.
   
3. Access to any course, any where in the world, anytime you want to take it
   
4. Precise focused education
   
5. No more multiple choice exams. Measure experience instead of test scores
   
6. Cooperation instead of isolation.
   
7. Teachers transform in to coach.
   
8. Lifelong learning, start working earlier.

Don't for a minute believe these two myths:

1. Great performance in school leads to happiness and success.
   
2. Great parents have kids who produce great performance in school. 
   

Here's what's true:

• Grades are an illusion, passion and insight are reality.
  
• Work is more important than congruence to an answer key.
  
• Persistance in the face of a skeptical authority figure is priceless.
  
• Fitting in is a short term strategy that gets you no where. Standing out is a long term strategy that takes guts and produces results.