So, I am glad to say that in my reading of Daniel Pink's, A Whole New Mind, he dealt rather quickly with my concerns posted last week. While I can identify myself as an ubber-left brain, concrete sequential step-by-step process geek, there does seem to be room in Pink's brave new world for me. In all seriousness, it took Pink about 10 pages to dispel my concerns. His central concept is that that moving forward we will need a whole mind, using both right and left halves. The "knowledge worker" economy dominated by left brain skills is eroding. As the economy changes and skills that traditionally require left brain organization and management are routinized and computerized, can moved anywhere in the globe, and done by a cheaper work force, we (as in the the western/USA dominated we) better be ready to capitalize on our right brain thinking skills.
A couple of thoughts come to mind. First, is not traditional teaching a pretty left brained dominated activity? Can traditional teaching be outsourced through the 'Net? I think so. Anybody have kids doing online enrichment Math through John's Hopkins or Stanford? I do. My biology teaching wife is looking hard at MIT Open Courseware and Yale Open Courseware for her advanced classes. Is Pink really radical? If you think hard, what parts of your job could be outsourced? Does Discovery Streaming, outsource a piece of the Library Media specialist's job w/ selecting and delivering video material? I am looking at purchasing Study Island for 3/4 grade testing remediation. I certainly can have my network and servers monitored from afar. Certainly someone smarter than me about networks can do patches and upgrades in the overnight hours? It is happening around the edges in education, but it is there.
Second, here is what I think could be a bellweather that Pink's ideas are gaining formal acceptance. My darling youngest daughter is just out the door to set up for her school's Winter Concert. She is a band weenie. In my kind and fatherly way I remind her often that all this band stuff won't help her hit a change up or understand the Vietnam War, and I can't believe it is ANOTHER night with the pep band at the basketball game. In truth I am awfully proud of her and deeply grateful to her young energetic band teacher who has given her gifts that I could not hope to do (although I could do without the 3 hour concert on this sunny winter Saturday afternoon).
So, here is the thing. At her school when calculating GPA (yes, save the comments, it IS an outdated, left brain notion) all of the art, Theater, and music classes carry less "weight" than advanced classes in the traditional academic areas. My kiddo works damn hard at her music. She is not great, but applies herself hard and puts in extra, extra time for that program. She gets less "credit" for her A's in band then she does for the B+ in history. Her left brained older sister (Ms. Honors, who can bang out an "A" paper faster than you can type Google, but over thinks anything practical into a pile of mush) figured it out during her time at the school. If you stayed in band, you faced the possibility that your GPA would slip or more correctly others in the top tier would edge by you as they took non-band courses to keep the GPA up. All the top kids dumped band after sophomore year and took. extra math so they could take AP Physics as they battled it out for the top three slots in class rank.
If Pink's proposition is to take hold for education would not the first sign be that all art/music/design courses carry the same weight as traditional left brain, read it, study it, spit it back academics?
More when I know it.
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Let's consider what the GPA's are used for... Getting into college. Colleges consider SAT scores along with GPA's. But I believe the "deal breakers" now are the Band, Music, Drama, Art and Debate, etc. activities that kids are engaged in - the right brain stuff. When the applications are reviewed for acceptance, you get into the "possible" pile with the SAT and GPA scores, but you actually get accepted with the extra curricular right brain stuff - ie. the "deal breakers". 2 sons have been through the college thing, and I believe the Harvard and Northwestern acceptances were due to the strong Music, Drama and Debate programs they were part of at our high school. Otherwise they were just the same as some kid with the cutoff numbers profile. Sad but true. Not sure how else colleges can deal with the hordes trying to take the next step.
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