Technology companies: stop moaning about how schools teach technology and start contributing to it instead

Don’t worry about the children that have too much screen time, worry about the ones that have none.

There are two recurring fallacies in conversation about opportunities in the technology industry that I’d like to call out:

1. Schools and teachers are failing to teach the right type of technology to our young people and they need to do more;
2. Technology entrepreneurialism is a meritocracy and the best rise to the top.

Teaching the right type of technology

At Mint we are forever experimenting with new technology. It’s a bit like bashing moles. Technology moves so quickly it’s difficult to keep up.

And we don’t have anything else to do.

Imagine being a teacher in a school. You would have to know what the latest technology trends are, you would have to set a curriculum, get it approved, apply for budget, fully learn it yourself and then teach it. It’s not reasonable for us to expect schools to figure this stuff out on their own. Technology companies should more directly contribute to education.

One of the best software engineers/entrepreneurs I know started programming computers when Apple put two in his school for free. So transformative was this for him that he got up early every day and walked to school ahead of the school bus to make sure his name was down on the list for people to use the computer that day (there was a roster on a first come first served basis). Imagine how different his life might have been had Apple not put those machines in his school.

We don’t all start on the same start line

It’s simplistic to say that the best entrepreneurs rise to the top. The experiences and influences that we have as children form us profoundly as young adults.

I remember once attending an investment banking graduate scheme assessment day. The day involved figuring out some mathematical problem and then debating the merits of your answer versus those of the other candidates. At the end, one of the interviewers followed me to the tube station and said, “Whose answer was the best answer?”

“Mine was,” I said.

“Then why didn’t you say anything in the group debate?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

But I do know. The answer is that, at that age I would never interrupt someone I‘d just met, or overrule them or demand that I was right. This was not a thing in my school and would be seen as a negative trait in the culture I grew up in. This was a disadvantage to me that day.

If we’re to celebrate our over-achievers of the future, we must do everything we can to ensure that all children have the same opportunity. That way we’re assessing them on the contents of their minds, not the contents of their parents’ wallets.

Call to action

These are big problems to solve, but Rocket.Fund (run by innovation foundation Nesta) is a terrific way to make an immediate and definable improvement.

Rocket Fund matches companies with local schools that need help to fund technology projects. At Mint, we’ve been matched with the tremendous Hugh Myddelton Primary School in Clerkenwell and here’s their fundraising video:

China, literally in your hands

Sign up here to make a donation. Or if you’re a technology company, VC or digital agency (or any other type of business), contact them and they’ll match you with a local school that needs your help.

Originally published at mintdigital.com.