Education is Fundamental

America and the world at large has a lot of problems to solve. A lot of issues that need addressing.

There’s: the economy, unemployment, income inequality, healthcare, climate change, whether or not climate change exists, the war on terror, drugs, hostility throughout the world, energy, sustainability, social issues and the list goes on.

While these are very much problems in their own right, I argue that they are, in a larger context, symptoms of a fundamental problem. That fundamental problem being education.

Education is eroding at our ambition and ability to solve big problems as a society and engage in constructive discourse. A population lacking in these areas cannot be expected to address and solve such multi-faceted, complex problems as unemployment, income inequality, energy, etc.

I believe that once we conquer this fundamental problem, slowly but surely, problems in healthcare, the climate, sustainability, etc. will begin to fall as well.

All of the problems mentioned above are more severe because for so long we have been ill prepared to solve them. Simultaneously, one of the consequences of standardization and testing in education is the rewiring of our brains to pick an answer and move on. We crave the instant gratification of recording an answer so we don’t have to deal with that question/problem anymore.

Put simply, we don’t stand a chance until we address the critical thinking, problem solving and discourse deficiencies in education.

This is what my project, Critical, is about. I encourage you to check out http://www.iamcritical.com/home and share with your friends and colleagues. You can also follow me on Twitter.