Sunday, March 13, 2016

A concise history of American education

IDEO CEO and president Tim Brown captured what might be the most concise history of American education written to date, and I'm pretty confident he did so without knowing. Read it and see if you draw the same parallel.
The industrial revolution created not just consumers but a consumer society. The sheer scale required to sustain the economics of industrialization meant that not only did products become standardized but so did the services associated with them. This brought tremendous benefits to society, including lower prices, higher quality, and improved living standards. The downside was that over time the role of consumers became almost entirely passive.
From Change by Design, p. 113

Isn't it high time we change our industrial education system so that students are no longer passive consumers stuck in a standardized environment, designed more for economical reasons unrelated to learning?