Eric Busby

When it comes to being expensive, money is no match for time. If you lose your money, you can earn more to replace it, but if you let time slip away, it’s gone forever. We all know this of course. Time is a constant and everyone is provided the same amount of time each day.

Every one of us, therefore, must choose how our time will be used on a day to day basis (within the context of our circumstances of course.) And because time is our most valuable commodity, using it to educate our children is the most expensive form of tuition payment available. When a parent forfeits a healthy annual income (or decides to earn less than their potential) in order to educate their children, we can easily quantify the exchange. However, the true cost reaches far beyond this simple calculation because the time can never be recaptured or regenerated. Obviously we all applaud parents who find ways to afford these decisions because they also represents the greatest possible return in the lives of the children influenced.

Of course, nothing speaks louder to your child than the time you spend with them… they completely understand that time is precious. I believe most parents understand this too, but often feel trapped in their circumstances, unable to escape the grip of financial cycles, demanding workplaces and the expectations of others.

But I would like to encourage every parent to change their mindset as this academic year approaches. Instead of looking forward to “getting your time back” when the kids start school, why not think of ways to “spend even more time with them”? Afterall, the demands of life never subside, but tomorrow will pass before we realize it, and your kids and grandkids will be grown in a blink. Make a decision today to invest your time with the kids, following their interests, looking at what they see, and helping them understand this complex world we have created. Every slice of time you spend with them has the potential to generate a ripple effect in their life. And the cumulative impact is staggering.

Little moments count. Walk together in the morning, take them to a museum by train, read a book they just finished and take them to ‘coffee’ to talk it over, wake up early and go to breakfast together, stay up late drawing a big picture on butcher paper together, ask them to teach you how to play handball again, or hopscotch, buy a kite and surprise them by arriving home early on a windy afternoon, go to their team practice and watch them instead of reading a book…. you get the idea… be creative and invest your time creating memories they will forever cherish.

Parents have always carried the significant responsibility of shaping their children into competent and productive members of society. A child must be nurtured physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and relationally. The intent of this article is to explore the mental development, and specifically the academic education of the child in today’s changing global society.

I remember growing up hearing “go to college so you can get a good job” and it seemed logical in a way. But it wasn’t enough in my case. I needed more help developing relationally than I did academically. In fact, I am certain that although I found tremendous success in a field completely unrelated to my university degree, I would have excelled even further had I been taught more about relationships. And while I didn’t pursue employment in my field of study, I have many friends who did, yet their academic background doesn’t seem to be the determining factor in their success. Their social intelligence, perseverance, creativity and follow-through are far more significant to their success than their GPA. Yet, as a society we still hammer on the academics pretty hard.

As a whole, American culture is favoring a transition from fragmented societal models to integrated societal modals. Allow me to elaborate…

The industrial and information revolutions gave rise to factories and centralized workplaces that were often dangerous, unhealthy or impractical to live near. Massive numbers of workers were concentrated in locations to increase production rates and workers found satisfaction in serving specialized roles within organizations that began to rival the size of small governments. As these organizations grew and interacted with one another, very large scale downtown metropolitan areas were developed and the skyscraper served as a visual reminder of the power and influence of organizations. People with certain skills were able to advance within their organizations and afford affluent lifestyles. The most fortunate people in this organizational model are often those with university degrees in a discipline with high demand. The specialization of roles creates a highly fragmented society. We end out having a different service provider in every role and every function with few generalists remaining. In fact a generalist is considered strange… “you mean you are a chemist and you sing in the opera”? :)

This fragmentation and specialization process has worked well for a couple generations now, in fact, while I assert we are heading back to a more integrated model (a separate topic), the availability of low cost computers and the ability to effectively outsource and offshore work have provided rich soil for certain functions within society to become more specialized than ever before. In other words, the world of 2050 will be SIGNIFICANTLY different than the world of 1950. The dynamics of the future carry their own challenges to raising competent and productive members of society.

To continue the observation, as metro areas grew they created new problems which required new solutions. One solution was to develop suburban areas that were more family oriented, and the commuter was born. Most recently, planned communities are developed to incorporate both commercial and residential zones so people can live and work in a single geographic space… in a way this harkens back to the storekeeper who lived above his shop (a very attractive idea in today’s reality)… While the suburb commuter still exists, it is becoming more common every year for people to work near to or in their homes. This is a movement away from fragmentation toward integration. The 1980s “soccer mom” who spent her time driving her kids to a dozen different specialists, lessons and teams, is being replaced by the 21st century family model that lives, works and plays in a more fluid experience. This is another movement away from fragmentation toward integration. You can read more about this elsewhere, and it is not my intent to spark debate on this subject, you will see I have plenty of spark yet to come.

The facts are interesting. Approximately 20% of the population in the US have completed a 4 year college or university degree after graduating from high school. Far fewer hold advanced degrees. Yet the cry of the masses remains “Stay in school. Go to college.” To what end? College graduates today are not presented with numerous job offers upon their graduation. In reality, they usually find themselves in a job interview being asked questions about their experience and skills. All of us who have ever been interviewed for a job opening know that experience/skills and relationships are how you get the job (at least the good ones) – Certainly there are individuals, most likely in highly technical or specialized fields, who get their first job based primarily on their academic achievements, but these are not the norm and they are usually limited to the first job. And unless that is the perfect job to last a lifetime, complete with a guaranteed 40-year run followed by a pension, it isn’t likely it will be the only job for that individual, so the relationships and skills will come into play soon regardless.

In his book The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman describes three stages of globalization (I recommend you read his book if you haven’t) and suggests that the rules are changing significantly in our lifetimes. We are no longer in the same construct that required and produced the educational institutions we have come to trust as the sole or, at a minimum the primary, solution to future prosperity and/or survival as a nation. Chapter Seven offers a frank discussion of the fear amongst Americans regarding competition and education. Friedman explores what he calls the “right stuff”; the educational requirements needed to survive in the flattened world. He stresses the importance of self-learning and learning to learn while offering valuable advice to parents unsure of their children’s educational and professional futures. It is interesting to note that he identifies right-brain skills, or those that cannot be duplicated by a computer, as critical for the future of US competitiveness.

Our schools are certainly concerned with the whole child, or at least most of the teachers are. “The system” may or may not have flaws and may or may not be able to improve over time, but as a society we need to evaluate what we need to prepare for and THEN construct education aimed in that direction.

Of course, the entire paradigm seems to hold the child’s potential affluence and/or prosperity as a chief aim. While this aim has long been questioned by pockets of academics and artists who never considered the utility of their pursuits as any more important than not, I believe most people hold prosperity as a top value for their children’s lives. In other words, there have always been people who live according to what some might call higher ascetics; pursuing their work without concern for its commercial application, but these folks have not been the norm over my lifetime. I am left wondering if the affluence/prosperity aim is a deeply rooted fear held over from the great depression generation. “Make sure you can earn a better living. Go to college, get good job.” Certainly every parent has a concern for their child’s ability to “make it out there” which is all the more reason to take the suggestion I will propose below quite seriously. But today’s thoughtful parent may not automatically choose affluence as the desired end state for their child as many parents in earlier generations have. I acknowledge that this is a gross generalization, but I am trying to make a point because everyone still seems to be beating the ‘do well in school to get a good job’ drum. IRONICALLY, the “good jobs” of the future may be less related to current advanced education achievements, so even if your goal is to have a prosperous child, the approach below may be one of your best shots, although that is not the primary intent.

The world is changing rapidly and we must realize that our approach as parents and educators must adapt significantly too.

The future will likely belong to the creative-class who generate the new ideas, not the technical-class who mass produce those ideas. Okay, I know I may have just upset a few people there, but remember I spent two decades as a technical-class person, and still earn a living in this way, so I don’t feel so bad saying that. But the fact is, that technical work is becoming easier every year, and what once was an engineering feat requiring teams of engineers can now be accomplished by a junior programmer with a couple of all-nighters. In fact, it has been my observation that technical people who are highly creative are the ones changing the world, and most of them learned their best technical skills on the job instead of in the classroom.

Before you tune out from this thought completely, consider that a huge number of the people who gave us today’s academic disciplines, the intellectual giants, were not educated by the systems that teach their work. We have created a system of knowledge transfer that ensures successful graduates are properly exposed to bodies of material, and SOMETIMES asks them to generate a new idea but OFTEN considers it such a remote possibility that it is dismissed as a pipe dream. Or at best, tells the child ‘well wait until you are older and have graduated before saying that, because it has probably already been done.” I wonder if we ever considered where the biggest and best ideas came from in the first place. When you look into this, it is often from people who were told they didn’t fit in the mold, didn’t make good students, didn’t follow the rules, didn’t conform to the standards, and so on…

So it is with this backdrop that I wish articulate my concerns and positions.

My wife and I are both educated, both hold university degrees, and both have spent time as educators (she taught children and I taught adults). We have read books, talked to others, scoured blogs, participated in our local school district as parents and volunteers, and observed everything in action. I hold a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership and am a good student according to my undergraduate and graduate professors and records. And I don’t think I am alone when I say that schooling is not the most critical success factor. In fact, the more education a person has, the less likely they are to point to time in school as the determining factor of success. Education is universally recognized as one of the most fundamental building blocks for human development and poverty reduction, yet when we limit our definition of education to the schools we are failing the student.

A trend I find interesting is the “un-schooling” movement. It is poorly defined and poorly named. And worse, it has been portrayed in the news in the most unusual and backwards fashion ever. You may have seen one of these stories… the reporter finds a family that is “un-schooling” their children and interviews them saying things like “I don’t know what grade I’m in” or “I don’t need to learn math” … you know, stuff to make the public outraged that there are parents acting so irresponsibly. But as I read about it, it seems to be a very natural and responsible way to approach education given a couple of modifications.

Please know I am a proponent of higher education, but only when it makes sense for the learning objectives and interests of the individual. I am also a huge proponent of the liberal arts education (my BA is in Philosophy)… but I will save that for a later article. For now, I simply want to recognize that the motive of higher education is often at odds with its result.

My advice to the “un-schoolers”, or anyone considering it, is to ditch the name “un-school” – that is a name that begs for trouble. And it isn’t even accurate from what I have read. If the emphasis is life-long learning in the context of the learner’s natural curiosity, then why say it is “un” anything. It would be like me walking around telling people I was an “un-astronaut” or that I was a “un-woman”… instead, come up with a name that is descriptive of what you stand for, instead of something “un-related”. Regardless, the principles behind the movement are certainly worth considering.

As of this writing, I am attempting to coin the term Confident Education as a descriptor of an educational philosophy I will articulate. It is founded on the principle that children are natural learners and, given the right environment, will certainly learn more than we can imagine. We can be confident that they will learn and we can be confident that they will develop into people who inspire, build, and enjoy the world they live in with their families, friends and communities.

UPDATE: I would also like to point out that confident education will be extraordinarily resource intensive. It would be unfair to teachers and educational administrators to consider learner-centric methodologies because it would be impractical. Therefore, not many children will be afforded this sort of education at first. But I am thinking about this and will post more later

It is my hope that parents will not simply assume that the schools will do what they say they will for the children, that they will recognize that it may take the schools and educational institutions too long to understand the changes which are needed and adapt to the emerging global realities, that they won’t be complacent and assume that doing well on the standardized tests is an indicator of progress toward being a productive member of society, or that being an involved parent means getting all the homework done (even when it doesn’t make any sense.) Instead, I hope that every mom and every dad will stop and think about the future we are facing and draw conclusions with courage and determination which will help their children develop what it takes to thrive in the world we are becoming. I realize that for the vast majority of parents, what I am saying doesn’t sound like a desirable rally cry, but for those who do, their children will become the next generation of leaders we will all follow.