Stop being lazy and saying: "Nothing could have prepared you for that"

In my twenties (not that long ago people!!!), I spent 2 years preparing to be a teacher through a masters program.  I studied theories, pedagogy and many different approaches to learning.  After having memorized a lot of theories, pedagogical approaches and "interventions", I was deemed qualified to teach.  Shortly there after I was the proud teacher of 12 Middle School boys who “had a little trouble being in a regular class.”  You know what came next?  Of course you do- pure chaos!  The best way to describe it was the game Whack-a-Mole.  When I got one fire out another popped up, and then another...and then another.  It went on like this for 8 hours a day for an entire year.  I was told I was doing a great job but “nothing could have prepared you for this.”   

While my experience was in education, this same situation is repeated over and over in every field.  I have talked to thousands of people who have had this similar experience.  We have become accustomed to just accepting the statement “Nothing could have prepared you for that.”  This is where I would like to call BS.  

This statement does a lot of absolving and is lazy.  How could “nothing have prepared me for this”?  How can you spend 18 years in formal education and not be prepared?  The reason we are not prepared is because we accept statements like “nothing could have prepared me for this?”  This way we can use lecture, memorization methods in school, teach concepts in isolation and abstractly for 18 years… and then absolve ourselves of true preparation (note- I am big on personal responsibility but that is a different story!).  

So even though I am an alumni of the School of Hard Knocks, I am not psyched for my kids to attend.  We can prepare our kids for anything that comes their way.  But it won’t be done sitting in a school that was designed for a different time.  Almost 80 years ago, John Dewey said, “If we teach today’s students as we were taught yesterday, we rob them of tomorrow.”  We have to stop saying “nothing could have prepared you for this” and design educational opportunities that can prepare our kids for the future world.