Check out more pictures from the event here and watch a video clip of Tony's talk here.
On November 17, one of the nation’s leading voices on innovations in education came to Sidwell Friends to meet with faculty and to speak later that night at a presentation for parents and others in the community. Tony’s visit was sponsored by The Christopher Ma Fund for Interdisciplinary Studies and The Trustees Term Fund.
Tony Wagner, an expert-in-residence at Harvard University’s new Innovation Lab and author of the acclaimed 2012 book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World, challenged his audience to prioritize finding ways to further nurture children’s creativity, spark their imagination, and learn the valuable and necessary lessons about persevering that come from failing—something he says children should be taught is not just okay, but expected.
The thought-provoking event was made possible in large part by the Christopher Ma Fund for Interdisciplinary Studies, and by the Trustees Term Fund, which seeds programs for the Board of Trustees’ Long-Range Priorities. During his time on the Sidwell Friends School Board of Trustees, the late Christopher Ma co-authored the Long-Range Priorities, the School’s blueprint for moving forward through 2025. The event was organized by the Faculty and Administration Steering Team (FAST) for the Long-Range Priorities.
Tony shared that speaking in the Robert L. Smith Meeting Room was a “special treat” for him. The last time he was here (from 1976 to 1980, he taught Upper School English and a seminar on leadership), the meeting room was a gym. Like the facilities, the changes in the field of education since then are nothing short of profound.
He opened his talk with a provocative assertion: “Knowledge has become a commodity that is growing exponentially,” he said. One “no longer needs teachers or a school or acquire knowledge…So what’s the value added by teachers these days?” he asked the room full of teachers.
“We have an innovation economy,” Tony explained. “The world simply no longer cares how much you know. What the world cares about is what you can do with your knowledge”—and that’s a brand new education challenge, he said.
In the past, “going to college was the ticket to a good life. But today, the unemployment and underemployment percentage for college graduates is 53 percent.” Graduates can’t pay back their average $30,000 college debt and are still living at home in their late 20s; yesterday’s BA now stands for barista and bartender, he quipped, adding that 15 percent of new hires at Google don’t have a bachelor’s degree at all.
An offshoot of this, he said, is that “employers don’t care about your credentials—they care about your competence.” And he further pushed the envelope by adding, “The skills you need to succeed in a competitive academic environment bear no relation to what you need in an innovation economy.”
More than any other skill, young people need to acquire the capacity to solve problems creatively, Tony said. This ability is desperately needed not just in the high-tech realm. “We need innovators to creatively solve problems in health and medicine, water, energy, and the fundamental challenge of creating a sustainable planet.”
An innovator is created, he said, when their education is fortified by:
Collaboration. He advised teachers to build accountable teamwork into every assignment, and team-teach whenever possible. “In traditional schools, we compartmentalize—physics, English, art. But innovation almost never happens within individual academic disciplines. . . . And [teacher] isolation is the enemy of innovation.”
Interdisciplinary courses, where “the big questions” can be asked.
Coaching instead of lecturing. When there’s only one expert in the room, and that’s the guy in the front of the room doing all the talking, a culture of passive information consumption is created, which “infantilizes” students. Coaches, on the other hand, see their job as to empower.
A failure-friendly atmosphere to foster “responsible intellectual risk-taking.” He encourages teachers and parents to see “F as the new A,” because “kids that take a risk and fail learn way more than the straight-A student who never took a risk at all.”
Iteration, which he calls his new favorite word. Students should be taught to reflect on their work and apply that reflection to their next project or course.
Motivation, but not in the form of money or grades, which are too often used as incentives. The most successful innovators “are far more intrinsically motivated by wanting to do interesting and rewarding work that makes a difference,” he noted. Students are most able to acquire grit, perseverance, self-discipline, and tenacity when they are allowed to pursue their real interests. Again citing Google, he said that employees at this technology leader are given one day a week to “play on company time”—to choose projects that they want to work on. “What if we [told] every incoming Sidwell Friends student to create their own explorations and initiate their own learning,” whose progress they would document in progress portfolios?
Education that creates innovators also avoids falling into the trap of “test prep curriculum,” which is what most of America’s students are taught today, he claims. Schools have only to look to colleges, an impressive 750 of which are making their entrance requirements “test optional,” including the venerable SAT.
Visit tonywagner.com to read his educational blog, find resources, and more.
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