By Alison Snieckus.
I read Seth Godin’s blog every morning. Short and to the point. Deeply inspiring. But I’ve not found a place in my daily routine to keep up with his new podcast, Akimbo. Maria, from Deep Root, posted to our Liberated Learners mailing list suggesting we all check out Seth’s Q&A episode, his “spot on” answer to a question on education. Seth writes at times about education as a system, that the current meritocracy is more about “stealing dreams” than offering opportunities to learn and master new skills. The question in the podcast episode asks if for the very poorest and unskilled among us, might this industrial model of education be the best option, at scale, to provide some of the desperately needed and most basic of skills.
Seths’ reply starts with a story, of course, to make the point that education needs to focus on helping people satisfy their curiosity and on supporting young people to be resilient. That humans learn stuff on their own, without school or teachers, all the time.
The mistake we make, starting when a kid is six years old is forgetting that they are independent actors who are allowed to have goals, goals that are bigger than “please the teacher” and ‘get an “A”. That if we can help kids discover that their actions unlock opportunities, we can build a cycle of unlocking opportunities. We need to teach kids, privileged or not, that their job is to solve interesting problems and to lead, because all the other stuff—all the other stuff— is going to get done by a computer.
Check out the full question and answer, starting at 5:12. Inspiring.
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