A guest post by Jake West
As a teacher at the mighty Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry, I am in a unique position to survey the educational landscape. We are a small high school, growing rapidly, focused on changing how students learn and graduate in British Columbia, Canada (and the world!). Our goal is to move away from an outcome based system to one built on competencies and big ideas through personalized inquiry. We believe in an emergent curriculum which by its very nature lends itself to entrepreneurial endeavors. With the internet of things upon us, innovation can come from anywhere. There is no reason why young, savvy, entrepreneurially minded high school students cannot make a gigantic impact– especially in the tech sector.
I personally know some of them. They are doing incredible work through mentorships with VIATeC (our local startup incubator) and Limbic Media (one of the best local tech companies); developing, creating and iterating projects that have potential commercial applications. Truly, they are learning the direct skills needed for the tech industry: engineering know-how, content knowledge, critical thinking and problem solving all the while creating things of value for the world.
These students don’t necessarily need university, rather, they need an apprenticeship; directly learning hands on daily, evolving with the industry in real time. For example, one of my students is a dedicated programmer– it is his passion and it is what he wants to do with his life. He has already been programming for years, and he definitely knows what he is doing — especially when he practices 6–7 hours everyday. He is already working in a startup team using Agile Engineering to design, make and implement a product for the real world. You can see it here. He still has 2 more years of high school where he will continue to code everyday for real-world projects. He will have 6 years of experience and practice. In my estimation, he does not need to do 4 more years of undergrad work. He is good to go.
What he does need though is an opportunity to break into the industry. He needs to be mentored one-on-one with a local entrepreneur to get the skills necessary to be savvy enough to run his own show. He needs to learn to pursue life-long learning which includes a mixture of both theory and practice that make him industrious and scrappy. He needs to be working in a startup to really know what is going on and form strong interpersonal relationships and connections in the community. He needs to learn strong work ethic in a vibrant setting using the very best practices on hand. He needs to take important people out to lunch and ask them questions on a weekly basis.
I wholeheartedly believe that the time to change is now. With every passing day, the old ways become less and less effective. When I am at the local university and I see students memorizing and regurgitating outdated content from over-priced textbooks, it makes me shake my head in disbelief that they think that those are the skills required going forward. No! Learning by doing is the way. That is why I strongly believe that Enstitute is the right model for building the skill sets for now. I would love to have Enstitute here in Victoria, BC so I could work closely with them to develop a pipeline of talent for the program. So Enstitute- the moment you decide to hit the West Coast, please let me know, you already have a loyal follower.
You can learn more about Jake and Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry here.
You can learn more about our apprenticeship program here.
