Most likely to succeed

Many schools today seem to follow the same approach: students go to class, memorize concepts and facts and take tests where they regurgitate everything they’ve learned. This style of education may have worked well in the industrial age, in which most workers only needed to learn how to complete a task and then repeat it over and over again. But in today’s context of constant innovation, a new approach to education is needed.

So, how should we update our education system to fit the needs of today’s economy? Put simply, we shouldn’t be focusing on teaching students what to learn, but how to learn. This way, the next generation will be better equipped to tackle the challenges of the future with creativity and adaptability.

1. Most schools teach students to memorize content – with little success

Lots of schools boast mission statements with catchy lines like “to help students uncover their passions,” but their supposed intentions rarely correspond with reality. The truth is that the educational methods employed by our schools are still based on the memorization of content, like specific facts and concepts – an approach that’s been proven largely ineffective.

But that’s not the worst of it; many core subjects, like arithmetic and language, are taught in the exact same way they were decades ago!

Basically, students are expected to memorize loads of content and regurgitate it during an exam. The problem is that students don’t retain this information.

So, for the most part, memorization doesn’t work. What we really need is a clear, overarching education strategy that actually prepares students for success in life; education should endeavor to teach students how to learn, not what to learn.

For example, instead of teaching students facts they can easily find on Wikipedia, we should be showing them how to solve problems using creativity and innovation. But beyond that, education should help students find their passions and purpose in life, while giving them the skills they need to follow their dreams. Such a system would inspire students to give their absolute best every day, while also becoming active, informed citizens.

2. The labor market has changed, and the education system should be revamped accordingly

You don’t need a PhD in economics to know that the labor market you face today isn’t the same one your parents faced when they were applying for their first jobs.

In fact, compared to just a century ago, the labor market has experienced dramatic shifts.

However, as the century came to a close, our economy experienced a radical change. This was in large part due to the advent of the digital economy, which made information and resources readily available to millions of people through the internet.

But the onset of the information age also made lots of jobs obsolete, replacing workers with automated processes or outsourcing their positions to other countries. As a result, workers today are faced with a new economic reality – and the education system should be adapted to suit it.

So, instead of producing workers who simply memorize concepts and repeat tasks, we should be teaching students to think creatively and grow into an innovative workforce capable of tackling the problems our future is sure to present.

If we don’t make this shift, we’ll merely be preparing students for a society that no longer exists. We will lay the foundation for a future in which only a privileged few scrape their way to the top, the majority of them likely coming from wealthy families that can afford high-quality education. As a result, the gap between rich and poor will grow wider and poverty will only get worse.

On the other hand, if we teach young people to solve problems creatively, they’ll be able to not only support themselves, but also participate in the global labor market, increase their productivity and accumulate greater wealth.

Of course, it’s not just what we teach that matters; it’s also how we teach it, which is exactly what we’ll explore next.

3. Lectures need to make way for new modes of teaching

How many times have you had to sit through a grueling 60-, or even 90-minute lecture, barely able to keep yourself focused on the professor’s words? For most of us, saying “a few” would be a complete understatement; while we might have made it through such torturous classes, how much did we actually learn?

When it comes down to it, lectures aren’t working. One key issue is that, with such tremendous resources and content available to students 24/7, they don’t really need lectures. Such a system might have made sense in the past, when a teacher was the only entity that held certain important and specialized knowledge – but we all know that’s no longer the case.

Nowadays, students don’t have to endure monotonous lectures that drag on and on, which is really for the best since so many people struggle to sit through them. For instance, the head of MIT’s Media Lab, Joi Ito, recently asked a student to monitor her brain activity for a week. He discovered that the student’s brain was least active during lectures, exhibiting even less activity than during sleep!

We need to rethink the way students learn, and one strategy to do so is called ConcepTest. This technique was invented by Eric Mazur, Area Dean of Applied Physics at Harvard University. He used to have his students answer thought-provoking questions like, “does the size of a hole in a rectangular metal plate increase, decrease or remain the same when the plate is uniformly heated?”

At first, the students were asked to answer on their own – but then they’d form small groups in which they’d offer their ideas and discuss their often divergent solutions. Once they’d reached conclusions as a group, they’d present them to the rest of the class.

By structuring his class in this way, Mazur never answered a single question or even gave a hint. Regardless of whether they reached the correct answer or not, students learned to think critically, form an opinion, communicate it and collaborate, in addition to countless other skills that are essential to success in the modern world.

By Tony Wagner & Ted Dintersmith