What Am I Working on Now?
My Mission: To make learning desirable and effective, in that order.
I love learning, yet my whole life, I was borderline-suicidal in the classroom. My only memories of my formal education are of staring longingly at the clock and praying for the minute hand to accelerate.
I want to save the next generation from that experience, one step at a time. I want to make kids love learning again. Nothing feels better than growth, and learning, in and of itself, can be one of the most satisfying, amazing experiences possible. Or, if delivered the way it currently is, it can be one of the most deranging, stultifying experiences imaginable - a prisonesque nightmare that leaves students with a deep desire to avoid learning for the rest of their lives.
Studies are projecting that kids today will probably hold 20 jobs in their lifetimes...not just two or three. They need next-century adaptability if they're going to be able to succeed in the future economy...and self-directed learning is the primary skill they'll need to develop to make that happen. Our schools are teaching the exact opposite methodology, and the effects are obvious.
Education is no longer about memorizing and regurgitating information - Google alone has rendered this skill useless. The leaders of the future will instead be able to find, organize, and utilize this information to make impactful changes to the world around them. Unless we change our education system and the ways in which we teach our children, they'll be left behind. But if we can take advantage of the newest discoveries in technology, psychology, neuroscience, and social engineering, we can create a generation of empowered, effective learners and leaders.
I'm currently obsessed with:
1. How to motivate our children to find, organize, and utilize the information they need to accomplish their goals. If students don't care, and if they don't realize how important a tool education is to their ultimate success, no external efforts will succeed. Crafting new, more effective methods of motivating our children is the single most important step we need to take in creating a compelling future.
2. How to create self-directed learners. Classroom learning is incredibly outdated. Horace Mann's educational methods were designed to train industrial factory workers, and his teacher-training methods were designed to train those who would create factory workers. One-on-one tutoring, while vastly more effective than classroom learning, is expensive, unscalable, and completely inconsistent.
Our children no longer need "teachers." They simple need coaches, mentors, and guides to help them as they teach themselves. In the past, a history teacher needed to memorize all the key facts of US history in order to teach it to his students. Now, that information is a mouse-click away. Instead, the "teachers" of the future simply need to point students in the right direction, motivate them to keep moving, and clear roadblocks as they arise.
The age of the "guru" is over. Any student who relies on a professor, a class, or a pre-scheduled meeting to receive an education is going to be left in the dust. We need to teach students how to teach themselves, then craft the infrastructure necessary to support that mission.
3. How to create the entrepreneurs of the future. Entrepreneurship is nothing more than the increasingly efficient use of the resources available to you. Entrepreneurs don't have to be app developers or startup founders - you can be an entrepreneurial employee, an entrepreneurial husband, and an entrepreneurial social services worker. Entrepreneurship is simply the skill of benefitting yourself and those around you to an ever-increasing degree with the lowest outlay of effort, expense, and time.
We can teach our children these skills. And in the coming years, we must. Teaching our children "the old ways" is a violent disservice to them, to their parents, and to the world of the future. Showing students how to more rapidly find and assimilate information, how to craft their own niche within the economy that provides services, benefits, and products to their "customers" and "employers," and how to make the most of the resources available to them should be the mission of every educator on Earth.
I love learning, yet my whole life, I was borderline-suicidal in the classroom. My only memories of my formal education are of staring longingly at the clock and praying for the minute hand to accelerate.
I want to save the next generation from that experience, one step at a time. I want to make kids love learning again. Nothing feels better than growth, and learning, in and of itself, can be one of the most satisfying, amazing experiences possible. Or, if delivered the way it currently is, it can be one of the most deranging, stultifying experiences imaginable - a prisonesque nightmare that leaves students with a deep desire to avoid learning for the rest of their lives.
Studies are projecting that kids today will probably hold 20 jobs in their lifetimes...not just two or three. They need next-century adaptability if they're going to be able to succeed in the future economy...and self-directed learning is the primary skill they'll need to develop to make that happen. Our schools are teaching the exact opposite methodology, and the effects are obvious.
Education is no longer about memorizing and regurgitating information - Google alone has rendered this skill useless. The leaders of the future will instead be able to find, organize, and utilize this information to make impactful changes to the world around them. Unless we change our education system and the ways in which we teach our children, they'll be left behind. But if we can take advantage of the newest discoveries in technology, psychology, neuroscience, and social engineering, we can create a generation of empowered, effective learners and leaders.
I'm currently obsessed with:
1. How to motivate our children to find, organize, and utilize the information they need to accomplish their goals. If students don't care, and if they don't realize how important a tool education is to their ultimate success, no external efforts will succeed. Crafting new, more effective methods of motivating our children is the single most important step we need to take in creating a compelling future.
2. How to create self-directed learners. Classroom learning is incredibly outdated. Horace Mann's educational methods were designed to train industrial factory workers, and his teacher-training methods were designed to train those who would create factory workers. One-on-one tutoring, while vastly more effective than classroom learning, is expensive, unscalable, and completely inconsistent.
Our children no longer need "teachers." They simple need coaches, mentors, and guides to help them as they teach themselves. In the past, a history teacher needed to memorize all the key facts of US history in order to teach it to his students. Now, that information is a mouse-click away. Instead, the "teachers" of the future simply need to point students in the right direction, motivate them to keep moving, and clear roadblocks as they arise.
The age of the "guru" is over. Any student who relies on a professor, a class, or a pre-scheduled meeting to receive an education is going to be left in the dust. We need to teach students how to teach themselves, then craft the infrastructure necessary to support that mission.
3. How to create the entrepreneurs of the future. Entrepreneurship is nothing more than the increasingly efficient use of the resources available to you. Entrepreneurs don't have to be app developers or startup founders - you can be an entrepreneurial employee, an entrepreneurial husband, and an entrepreneurial social services worker. Entrepreneurship is simply the skill of benefitting yourself and those around you to an ever-increasing degree with the lowest outlay of effort, expense, and time.
We can teach our children these skills. And in the coming years, we must. Teaching our children "the old ways" is a violent disservice to them, to their parents, and to the world of the future. Showing students how to more rapidly find and assimilate information, how to craft their own niche within the economy that provides services, benefits, and products to their "customers" and "employers," and how to make the most of the resources available to them should be the mission of every educator on Earth.
What's Next?
I'm working with some of the most innovative and influential leaders in education and business to bring these lessons and projects to the masses. Currently, I'm speaking around the globe to push forward my initiatives, and you can learn more about my speaking schedule and topics here. I'm also crafting new online programs to help scale up these developments and assist students, teachers, and families who want better tools for the future. If you'd like to get in touch for an interview, or to learn more, don't hesitate to reach out to my team here and schedule a call.
