“My contention is that creativity, now, is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” This is the message Robinson seeks to deliver, in a sometimes humorous, sometimes profoundly stirring talk [video] about how creative vision helps to foster a more complete education that makes for more complete human selfhood.

“Children entering school today will retire in 2065,” notes Robinson. He also points out that despite all the expertise of the most creative and experienced minds in education and technology, no one can adequately predict what the world will look like in 5 years’ time, let alone 55 years’ time.

We don’t know what exactly we’re preparing students for, so we need to think seriously about how to give them the preparation they need to learn, innovate and adapt, in an ever-changing environment, where performance in any field will require such an intellect.

Amen to that. Daniel Pink amply addresses the threats to American viability in the world market in A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brain Thinkers will Rule the World, or something to that effect, citing “automation” and “asian” as serious rivals of the rote educational models being implemented in classrooms nation-wide. The NSSE, an annual survey of student engagement in higher education uses “engagement” as a measure for the effectiveness of education. Co-ops, hands-on undergrad research, service learning are all components that allow students the agency to seize their own educations (perhaps the university model should echo the Montessori preschool model more closely because Maria Montessori knew a century ago what we are finding today, that if students are granted the freedom to exercise choice over their “work” in the classroom, they are more likely to become life-long engaged learners, who are not merely learning for a test. Back to the right brain for a moment, “story” “design” “empathy” are all according to Pink modalities of the right brain and it is precisely these, not the left brain math, language, distill down to a method and repeat if necessary, that will give the US a shot a staying in the game. For our sake, I hope that more educational institutions begin teaching to the future rather than the past.