Wicked Education Problem #1

System level problems that prevent digital transformation and general innovation in classrooms

🤫 "Education" as a system has friction points and problems in every direction you look.

Without in any way wanting to take the pessimist's path, I'll be posting what I see as a range of issues that either need to be or will be solved in the coming years. My intention is to provoke thinking and conversation.

The first is the enduring view we hold, as adults, of the experience of education we had as students. In many ways, this forms a 'glass frame' that limits the capacity to 'sell' innovation to a parent body.

In a recent workshop around AI with parents I put this metaphor. Our enduring experience frame is a bit like driving a 30 year old SUV, and not noticing or accepting innovations that create better vehicles.

The Chinese electric SUV is a good metaphor for how education might have, or will soon change. It is powered by a different energy source, and it is built in a geography that, itself, might surprise us. Yet, the newer vehicle is still recognisably the same type as the older version.

For schools that are dependent to some degree on parents as financial customers, necessary radical change is unpalatable for fear of losing income. This stifles innovation and adaptivity to a changing world.

Time is short now, and getting shorter. The adapt or die principle of Darwinian biology might begin soon to bite deeper than ever for our education systems. Let’s not mince words here - “Education” has not been delivering world ready humans for some time now, with this gap widening each day that AI innovates and improves.

So a strategy here is to engage with parents of your school or institution. Educate, inform and prepare them for the fast and deep changes that are closing in.

❓ What metaphors might you pitch to represent how education might be 'unrecognisable' in the coming years?

❓ What are your thoughts?