Seth Godin is a leading voice in area of marketing. He write a daily blog with has a huge following, and has written several books. His main viewpoint is that the social contract that brought the mass market into existence had a key component around the construction of schools and education for all. The factory owners not only needed a market for the product that the industrial revolution made possible, but they needed a supply of workers educated sufficiently to enable them to be good factory operators.
The world we live in today is no longer that world. The manufacturing sector has disappeared and we no longer need to educate our kids with the knowledge that they will need for a factory job. In fact, the social contract said give us your kids and we will train them and guarantee them a job. They will then have income and also become our customers. And, you will gain by having product available and an improved standard of living.
The world in which those rules were made, and the world we live in today have diverged, but the structure of education hasn’t. It still compulsory and we are teaching our kids and preparing them for a world that no longer exists. We are lying to them.
Seth has just finished writing a manifesto on education: Stop Stealing Dreams. Please take a few minutes and take a look, and share your comments with me. What are we going to do about it?
