Librarianship. Education. Experimentation.
I’m sure some of you have seen this already, but I thought I’d share for those who haven’t. I’m a big Ken Robinson fan and what’s not to love about the RSA Animate series?
I particularly like how he distinguishes between divergent thinking and creativity (near the end of the video). I guess you can thank the education system for beating (or boring) the creativity out of you.
Throughout The Great Reset Richard Florida uses two past economic “resets” as instructive examples for our current economic situation. The First Reset was called the Long Depression (late 19th century) and the Second Reset was the Great Depression (1930s). In the final chapter of the book, he uses these resets to comment on the current state of education:
“The First Reset gave us the modern system of public schools and laid the foundations of the modern university and college education system, as well as modern engineering education. The Second Reset expanded higher education, among other things sparking the creation of the modern research-intensive university. Those giant strides forward are but small steps compared to the changes required today.” (p. 183)
Think about that for a second… if Florida is right, then we need to overhaul the entire educational system (or invent something new that can run alongside the existing system). It’s a scary thought, but perhaps those of us in higher education are living on borrowed time – it’s only a matter of time before students, employers, and maybe even governments decide that they’re not getting the right return on their investment in traditional higher education environments. Then what do we do?
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