Grant's book reinforces my belief that we need to teach our children how to be original: original thinkers will bring original solutions to existing problems and also ones that don't even exist yet. Doing this will open up the door to who they are as individuals. It will open up their minds to new ways of approaching the world around them. By giving them the power to question, they will feel enabled to control their own path. Why? They will see the beauty and the brutality of the world around them. Original thinking intuitively prompts someone to approach a thing in a way builds on their own unique strengths. Furthermore, because when we were growing up, robots were simply machines that did what we told them to do. Now, these machines are thinking, creating, making connections and intuiting for themselves. So, if our children are not original, they will be followers in a world where machines have surpassed humans in computing capacity as well as the ability to create, solve, and think.
Grant says that the "starting point is curiosity: pondering why the default exists in the first place."
Therefore, in the setting of a school, asking why, understanding the history, background, rationale, or the foundational beliefs behind why something (the default) exists is the also the first step to understanding, thus learning. Then, questioning all of those assumptions will lead to truly life improving inventions and ways of being.
One of my least favorite words these days is innovation. A close second is disruption. I used to love these words and what they represented. But as with many things, they became so ubiquitous that they because misused and commonplace to the point where they became the new default. I still love the ideas behind the words and believe that education and schools need both innovation and disruption. The alternative is status quo, stagnation, and irrelevancy.
David Roberts, Distinguished Faculty, Innovation and Disruption (funny) from Singularity University, explains the important difference between the two concepts.
|
Innovation -----------------------------> Disruption |
||
|---|---|---|
| Doing the same things better | Doing new things |
Doing new things that make the old things obsolete |
Questioning assumptions will lead our children to ask new, previously unthinkable, 'what ifs'. Professor Roberts shared some of his what ifs for you to ponder. What are some of your what ifs?
What if...automation and AI created jobs ?
What if... machines could make and keep money?
What if... our education was all wrong?
What if... borders and walls won't stop employment migration?
What if... the viruses that killed us, saved us?
What if...the future wasn't like the past?
What if...the biggest problems in our future were not from a lack of resources?
What if...the biggest problem in the world was you?
What if...the biggest problem in the world is that there is a void of leadership?