Re-Purposing Education
Why dreaming matters
I spend my days surrounded by brilliant individuals, with innovative ideas and the impetus to transform entire industries, and ultimately the world, through this thing we call digital. At Undercurrent, we’re used to talking about transformation, about the Ever Better Future that we hope to live in, about the magic of the world that has yet to be unleashed by the next technological wonder.We are unquestionably and unabashedly forward thinkers.
We want legacy companies to act more like start ups . We want college graduates to take risks after years in an academic institution. But the world still wants high schoolers to act like high schoolers. Our society expects them to define success based on the same skewed measures and metrics that our parents were once prescribed. Recognizing this flaw in our education system is far from a unique observation, but for the most part, we’re still ignoring the real problem with the system— it’s a lack of Purpose.
A couple weeks ago, I attended the first ever DreamCon— an event organized by The Future Project that brought together 250 students from 14 high schools across New York, New Haven, DC and Newark. Each school was represented by a Dream Team— a collection of students who will work with a Dream Director throughout the year to transform their schools and communities. Essentially, the Future Project is creating a culture of intrapreneurship. The organization is empowering individuals to pursue their passions and dreams by recognizing that the biggest flaw in the current school system is the inspiration gap. We need to teach individuals to not only believe that change is possible, but to believe that they have the power and ability to make that change happen.
I’ve been volunteering as a Coach for The Future Project for just over a year. In that short time, I’ve watched students start their own non-profit organizations, launch blogs, organize talent shows, prototype mobile apps, write novels and books of poetry, create public art installations… I could go on. I’ve also been acting as a Regional Ambassador for Girl Rising, a film and movement focused on changing the direction of girls’ education in the developing world. I’m no expert in the field, but I’m dutifully engaged.
In high school, I was the archetype of a good student— I never missed class, got almost perfect grades, high SAT scores, and was admitted early decision to a great university. I was fortunate to attend a college that encouraged and celebrated individual thought and imagination. But I often wonder who I would be if I cared a whole lot less about those perfect grades back in high school — if only I’d been taught to dream a little bit sooner.
It won’t be long before textbooks are an antiquated relic of education’s dark days. I may be the minority in the digitally enabled world— I still prefer a physical book to a Kindle— but I dream of the moment when a textbook no longer holds the key to passing an exam and graduating high school. The day when our youth’s ideas, expressions, and imaginations act as the cultural and intellectual capital needed to advance in our world. We’re already experiencing a shift towards an “idea economy” elsewhere, why not in secondary education?
It all comes back to Purpose. Currently, the purpose of school is not defined with a capital P. Go to school, pass the exams, graduate, get into a decent college, graduate, and then go swim in the sea of others who lack direction. Even the best and the brightest don’t know where to go. Those who succeed in this system are no more primed for success in the world we now live in— the inspiration gap lives on. We haven’t all been taught to dream, to imagine change, to organize around our ideas and learn how to take action, iterate, produce, again and again and again.
The current model is inherently prescriptive and lacking the flexibility that is needed to truly produce creative, innovative thinkers. There’s no moving forward without Purpose. And there’s no denying that the current education system has spoiled that P for all those that sit within it.
In part, the magic of the Dream Team lies in the idea that the very concept works to decentralize a school’s structure and redistribute the authority, providing students with a voice and collective body to take action. There’s a noticeable shift that occurs when an individual’s perspective is altered in such a way that they recognize their own potential to make a real difference. They have an individually defined Purpose, and reason to go to school that never existed before— it hasn’t been mapped out for them, they’ve created it themselves.
A recent article in Wired uncovered this very educational philosophy in action, and it all ties back to digital:
“Access to a world of infinite information has changed how we communicate, process information, and think. Decentralized systems have proven to be more productive and agile than rigid, top-down ones. Innovation, creativity, and independent thinking are increasingly crucial to the global economy.”
By applying the logic of the digital age to the classroom, you’re priming students to not only engage with the material they are learning about, but also to seek out and geek out over ideas and theories not traditionally studied in high school.
It’s about allowing youth to have agency over their own time, and enabling them to sculpt their own minds.
Good grades won’t necessarily equate to success in the world we now live in. But, as Shelley Provost sums up perfectly in Inc, “If kids can discover the one thing in life they can’t NOT do, they will succeed. Period.”
