Barnabas File

Despite major shifts  in society, the economy, and technology, changes in education have been slow (even glacial) in coming.  Whether we are looking at education for children, teenagers, or adults, we see systems  grounded in the 19th or early 20th centuries that seem impervious to adaptation. In Most Likely to Succeed:  Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era, authors Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith draw on their backgrounds  in education (Wagner) and innovation (Dintersmith) as well as their experience as parents to challenge the status quo in education. Here are their primary arguments: • Rapid advances in innovation are eliminating structured routine jobs from our economy, leaving millions of young Americans at risk. • The critical skills young adults need in the twenty-first century for careers in the world of innovation, and for responsible citizenship, are the very skills the school years eviscerate. • The education policies our country is ...