"Learn from the place itself"

I opened my news feed this morning to yet another article asking "What should it take to graduate high school?" This time it is the New York State Board of Regents reconsidering the requirements to earn a diploma.

Let me be clear: This is a critically important question to answer, not just for the Board of Regents, or even educators in schools across New York State, but also to signal to students what they need to know and be able to do to prepare to graduate into the world of work; to colleges and employers who have their own sets of expectations about what it means to be ready for what comes next; and to all of us as civic participants expecting our fellow citizens to be grounded in a common set of understandings about what it means to participate in a democracy.

The problem is that we have been recycling this same conversation since at least 1983, if not earlier. Flags are raised that our students are not prepared for college, career or active civic participation. Employers say colleges and high schools aren't preparing students with the skills or knowledge needed for the modern workplace. Colleges and universities have long complained (particularly in their Math Departments) that high school graduates aren't ready for college-level work. High school teachers complain about middle school outcomes; middle schools about elementary schools; elementary schools about pre-school, and eventually we get back to the parents and the cycle of poverty, supposed cultural decline and other factors that have stacked the odds against some before they were even born, based on who their parents are or what ZIP code they live.

So every few years, dating at least to the Nation At Risk Report in 1983, but certainly to earlier studies in the 1960's and 1970's, we signal a problem. we blame the schools, we revisit standards, curriculum and assessments over a period of years, we measure again, and when we don't like the results, we start all over again. Perhaps we need a different approach.

Which brings me back to Republic Polytechnic in Singapore, which I visited in 2008 as part of a study tour while working for the NYCDOE. While touring this remarkable post-secondary campus serving some 10,000 students, I met the lecturer W.A.M. Alwis, who is referenced in 2012 book One-Day, One-Problem: An Approach to Problem-based Learning, which provides an overview of Republic's particularly impressive approach to Problem Based Learning. Have a listen to how he thinks about learning and curriculum development and how to prepare students for the future.

When I read this morning that we would once again reconsider what one needs to know and be able to do in 2020 to graduate high school, I was reminded of Dr. Alwis's words regarding the future workplace: "Send students there able to learn from the place itself." The pace of technological change has only accelerated in the past 40 years. It is impossible to know what industry and society will need of students 5 years from now, much less the 50 years that students will likely be working, as Dr. Alwis said.

So rather than constructing standards today for curriculum that will be taught next year and tested no earlier than two years from now, we should be preparing students to learn from that place in the future. Preparing our students to be learners is a different task than training them to know or do certain things.

For all I learned in elementary, middle and high school, and college and graduate school, each and every day is a learning adventure. Taking what I've learned in the past and applying it to new and novel situations. When it works it works, when it doesn't, I have to learn how to deal with whatever is in front of me--I read, I Google, I talk to others, I experiment, and I often fail before I succeed. But if I don't have that growth mindset and the ability to learn in my current context, then I'm truly in trouble. I hope we will prepare our students for a constantly changing world where they are equipped to grapple with all of the challenges, small, large and existential, that await them after schooling is done and their own learning is only just beginning.