Winds of....Evolution

Somewhere along the way, "change" became a dirty word. In American school culture, the structure of which has remained mainly the same over the past fifty to sixty years, change is almost sacrilege. Perhaps the negative connotation of "change" is due to its inherently being instituted, as opposed to developing organically. Perhaps a more appropriate term for what must take place in schools is evolution.

Evolution is generally accepted as change that occurs over time, moving unseen like the hands of a clock, and represented by survival of the fittest organisms or ideas. In the world of education, that evolution has begun to occur exponentially in response to a rapidly evolving world. The rate of evolution in today's digital age is, at times, astonishing. Schools focus on trying to keep up, when instead, the goal of education should be to jump ahead.

It's not practical to think that schools can keep up with the rate of evolution occurring in technology, or even society, today. What is incumbent upon us as educators, is to give our students the fundamental skills needed to function in a variety of change / evolving environments, and then give them practice applying those skills to unique and unfamiliar problems.

I recently went with a group of students to see the movie Interstellar. It's a fascinating film in many different ways, but what really occurred to me in the context of this "science-fictiony" film was to question whether the science of the movie was realistic. Is it theoretically possible to travel through time and space by bending time? Is it theoretically possible that there are multiple dimensions that exist simultaneously? In order to answer these questions, one would need not only a fundamental knowledge of mathematics and physics, but an incredibly creative / adaptive mind, suitable for applying those fundamental skills to complex questions. Beyond the science of the movie, are the sociological, ethical, and philosophical questions. As the world evolves, the level of complexity of these issues grows.

As schools evolve, we will have to grapple with what level of fundamental skill is appropriate, and whether those skills have to be acquired in traditional ways, or can be acquired along the way in experiential, participatory learning models. Balance in all things is important, and certainly the balance between skill, content, and adaptation is a delicate one. Preparing our students for college, and for the world beyond college requires that we have taught them to be ahead of evolutionary arcs by fostering in them creative, visionary minds.

Early 20th century inventor Nikola Tesla said, "It is paradoxical, yet true, to say that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightment that we become conscious of our limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellectual evolution is the continuous opening up of new and greater prospects."

Here's to the continuous opening of new and greater prospects through educational evolution...