Can We Fix Our Educational Failures?
This last January the documentary "Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was not part of a George Clooney or Robert Redford enterprise. In fact, it did not include any Hollywood A-listers. The film was the brainchild of venture capitalist Ted Dintersmith as part of his platform to get America to rethink the way we "do education".
Dintersmith is the product of a public high school and state college. His is also a driven go-getter who made his money with a semiconductor start-up and then in venture capital. During that time, he saw brilliant people making advances that took away old-school jobs and replaced them with ones that demanded free-thinking and innovation. He sought to surround himself with those who were academically bright, but soon learned that "such patently qualified people often proved hopeless in the world of innovation."
This was all quite curious to him until he had children of his own. Dintersmith recalls a time when his son was in third grade and made a brilliant science presentation that was rewarded with a sea of red ink. Confronting the teacher and asking why his son's correct answers and responses were not as valid as the "one" answer the teacher desired, he was met with an answer that changed his life. “Throughout school, these kids will need to take standardized tests. We need to prepare them properly. Open-ended questions can confuse …show more content…
Why were his kids in school and what were they actually learning. He wanted to know if the school was doing anything to prepare his children for life. He quickly found that most of what the students learned could be classified as "irrelevant." Granted, many of these "irrelevant" learnings would be tested and get his children into college if they learned them, but he could not find a useful connection to
This last January the documentary "Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was not part of a George Clooney or Robert Redford enterprise. In fact, it did not include any Hollywood A-listers. The film was the brainchild of venture capitalist Ted Dintersmith as part of his platform to get America to rethink the way we "do education".
Dintersmith is the product of a public high school and state college. His is also a driven go-getter who made his money with a semiconductor start-up and then in venture capital. During that time, he saw brilliant people making advances that took away old-school jobs and replaced them with ones that demanded free-thinking and innovation. He sought to surround himself with those who were academically bright, but soon learned that "such patently qualified people often proved hopeless in the world of innovation."
This was all quite curious to him until he had children of his own. Dintersmith recalls a time when his son was in third grade and made a brilliant science presentation that was rewarded with a sea of red ink. Confronting the teacher and asking why his son's correct answers and responses were not as valid as the "one" answer the teacher desired, he was met with an answer that changed his life. “Throughout school, these kids will need to take standardized tests. We need to prepare them properly. Open-ended questions can confuse …show more content…
Why were his kids in school and what were they actually learning. He wanted to know if the school was doing anything to prepare his children for life. He quickly found that most of what the students learned could be classified as "irrelevant." Granted, many of these "irrelevant" learnings would be tested and get his children into college if they learned them, but he could not find a useful connection to