Rigor and Seven Survival Skills for the New Economy

This will be a short post and probably not a good post to put out into the blogosphere right before NECC (it will probably disappear in everyone’s aggregator), but I need to post it today before the thoughts escape my mind…

Today I attended a luncheon celebrating the end of another year of the Houston A+ Challenge New Visions in Leadership Academy. I was officially inducted into their “Fellows” group having completed my second and final year of the academy. Next year I will attend the alumni monthly cohort meetings.

At today’s luncheon, the guest speaker was Tony Wagner from the Harvard Leadership Institute. I have long been an admirer of Dr. Wagner and I do agree with his arguments that our education system doesn’t need to be reformed — it needs to be reinvented. (As a side note, I am currently reading “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns” (Clayton M. Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, Michael B. Horn) and I believe there are more than a few connections to be made between Wagner’s work and this book.)

However, until today, Dr, Wagner has not addressed the issue of globalization and it’s implications for education. Today he talked a bit about the topic of his most recent book, “The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need–And What We Can Do About It” (Tony Wagner) which is available for pre-order through Amazon.com. I am definitely pre-ordering this book because I have found Dr. Wagner’s previous books (“Making the Grade: Reinventing America’s Schools” (Tony Wagner) and “Change Leadership: A Practical Guide to Transforming Our Schools (Jossey-Bass Education)” (Tony Wagner, Robert Kegan, Lisa Laskow Lahey, Richard W. Lemons, Jude Garnier, Deborah Helsing, Annie Howell, Harriette Thurber Rasmussen)) so relevant to our work in school improvement.

I want to summarize a few things that Dr. Wagner shared with us today and put this out there for everyone to “chew on” for a bit. I don’t think there was anything that he said today that I could argue with, and I am happy to see/hear a prominent educator discussing issues that many of us in the EduBlogosphere have been discussing for some time. He told us that in the past two years he has been influenced by two books: “Updated & Expanded 2006 Edition of the World Is Flat” (Thomas L. Friedman) and “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future” (Daniel H. Pink) (I think I can safely say that most of us are very familiar with these texts. By the way, just to let you know — when he asked how many people had read The World is Flat, MANY hands went up in a room of over 100 people. When he asked how many had heard of or read A Whole New Mind, I only saw 2 or 3 hands go up — and one of those hands was mine. The room was full of local school leaders — principals, assistant principals, district leaders. Just an FYI…)

Dr. Wagner shared with us his “Seven Survival Skills for the New Economy” which he discusses in length (with examples from interviews with business leaders and from his weekly classroom observations):

1. Critical thinking and problem-solving
2. Collaboration across networks (across distance, time, space) and leadership by influence (as opposed to “by position”)
3. Adaptability and agility
4. Initiative and entrepreneurialship
5. Effective oral and written communication skills
6. Accessing and analyzing information — information is constantly changing & growing exponentially (here he really criticized our current testing curriculum and gave examples of countries who outperform us on exams, but who use performance assessment or portfolios or oral/written exams rather than multiple choice.)
7. Curiosity and imagination — innovation and creativity — we can’t continue to produce innovators randomly or by chance, we must produce them intentionally (AMEN!)

There were also two “sound bites” regarding the concept of “Rigor” that I thought were particularly relevant:

• “Rigor” is using academic knowledge to create new knowledge/content and to solve real problems.
• Engagement begins with the MIND, not with the HANDS (that is a very loose paraphrase) — activities & action do not equal “rigor”

I really can’t find much to argue with in those statements. More importantly, I am encouraged that someone with Dr. Wagner’s influence within the policy-making levels of our education system is finally talking about these issues with educational leaders.

Any thoughts?

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1. Marsha June 26, 2008 12:40 pm

   I agree with many of Dr. Wagner’s “Seven Survival Skills,” but he’s leaving out something very important: we need to be teaching our children (actually, everyone), about the most challenging issues of our time and inspiring and empowering them to develop their own positive solutions. We need to help instill in our children the desire and capacity to live with compassion, integrity and wisdom. I’m not talking about “indoctrinating” them with a certain world view; rather, providing them with accurate information, fostering curiosity and critical thinking, and letting them make their own decisions based on their values. There isn’t going to be much of a future if we’re not all working toward creating a compassionate, just, sustainable world and learning to live and work peacefully and harmoniously with each other.

   I whole-heartedly support the concept of reinventing education, and I’m glad that there are already schools out there integrating the concepts that Dr. Wagner advocates AND that also include helping young people create a better world.

2. Stephanie June 26, 2008 12:45 pm

   Marsha,

   I agree with you 100% on your point. Without “compassion, integrity, and wisdom” all of the knowledge in the world is useless. We have numerous examples from history and contemporary society of highly intelligent people acting selfishly and completely without compassion, integrity, or wisdom.

   Thank you for sharing that very, VERY important insight.

   Stephanie

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