students who are prepared for the demands of the twenty-first century. The United States ranks last among industrialized nations for college graduation levels. Other countries with similar education models are experiencing the same fall out in student engagement and performance. Germany, England, China, Singapore, South Korea, France, Australia, Canada, Japan, and other countries are stepping back and asking the same questions we asked about the effects of their education machines.
Today's oracles, such as Sir Ken Robinson, Tony Wagner, Douglas Thomas, John Seely Brown, and others are painting vividly clear pictures of a harsh system that is killing creativity at the very time in history that most demands creativity and innovation! They are the most important survival skills in a postindustrial world.
The book explains how the “Gutenberg to Google” revolution has generated a perfect storm of discontent, dysfunction, and disengagement in our traditional system of education.
While the policy debates and shifting priorities continue to keep schools off-balance and parents in the dark we have a crisis that won't wait.
This book announces that we stand at a true “Oh, my God” moment in history. The numbers tell a story that can no longer be ignored. In addition to the disengagement numbers already cited, half of all students are considered “at risk.” More than 25 percent of students live in poverty. 1.36 million students are homeless. None of this is a secret. Yet the system cannot or will not budge.
After 60 years of studies, we don't have time for more research, reform measures, or debate. The revolution has already started. It is even now overthrowing an obsolete industrial regime, structure, and set of values.
That's why we need a manifesto, not another proposal. After 60 years of studies, we don't have time for more research, reform measures, or debate. The revolution has already started. It is now overthrowing an obsolete industrial regime, structure, and set of values. That insurgency will reclaim learning as a fundamentally human experience. Gutenberg enabled the first learning revolution more than 500 years ago. Google now symbolizes the new one. Digital technology is disrupting traditional power centers by distributing knowledge to anyone who choses to join this historical opportunity.
This Book: A Road Map
Before tsunamis bring death and destruction to coastlines, wild and domestic animals sense the coming devastation and escape to higher ground.
Maybe people are catching up. Today's early warning systems are enabling human populations to flee destruction from natural forces. Our purpose for the book is not to build a case for change. That change is here; perceptive people plainly see it. At this point of history, a road map to the high ground would be of more benefit to the students, parents, communities, educators, and others who face destruction.
That is why this book is different from any other. Knowing that this subject carries great urgency and demands great scope and depth, we assembled about 60 career educators, a wide variety of specialists, NFP organizations, and business and community leaders who have been successfully working to rehumanize learning (see Figure 1.1). Many of these contributors have been in the trenches of education for decades.
Figure 1.1 Columbus, Indiana, MindShift Meeting
We convened six summits, between June 2014 and January 2016, around the country in order to study very innovative schools that achieved and maintained excellence (often against great odds). Many books document the failures of our public education system. Others provide a vision for twenty-first-century schools. But there are no road maps for transforming and rehumanizing local schools or districts. Our book gives a very compelling why and, more important, clear maps for the new and uncharted territory.
Who Should Read This Book?
In researching and writing this book, our team focus was always on parents, teachers, administrators, and community leaders. This book is for them. It is for those who do not have the time or resources to sift through the many books or conferences or websites in order to gather the knowledge essential to taking action. We wrote this for those who are not willing to wait for local, regional, or national regulations to trickle down or be parachuted in.
That is also why we wrote a manifesto and not a typical market-driven volume. The tsunami is racing toward our shoreline. We are announcing a road to higher ground. In short, we want to save lives and join with others in building a safe future.
How One Family Escaped the Great Machine
It may help you to know the short story of one family who lived through the crumbling of the K–12 system and saw the seeding of new possibilities. That family is mine.
Back in the 1990s we moved to one of the best school districts in the state, not because we were snobs, but because we cared. We wanted our three kids to have fine educational experiences, rolling right through K–12. All three of them are, well, exceptional. By that I mean that they are true individuals. Everyone who knows them would agree. They did not come from an assembly line or central casting. Lisa and I did not know it at the time, but in looking back, we can see that our kids were like canaries in the coal mines. Their experiences (and those of thousands of other students) exposed the toxins in K–12 education.
This book is for those who do not have the time or resources to sift through the many books or conferences or websites in order to gather the knowledge essential to taking action.. those who are not willing to wait for local, regional, or national regulations to trickle down or be parachuted in.
And, I admit that our three children carried some surprising baggage.
Part of what makes Emily, our 24-year-old bold and beautiful daughter, so exceptional is Asperger syndrome. Her challenges have always caused this lovely and brilliant woman to express very unique social skills, perspectives, and boundaries.
I describe our second child, Daniel, as “a merry prankster.” He, the opposite of Emily when it came to social skills and boundaries, did extremely well in elementary school. But later he began to exhibit some discomfort with school rules and expectations. He was eventually diagnosed with ADHD.
Right out of the chute, our third child, Caleb, loved school. But very quickly (and for a whole different set of reasons) he, too, began disengaging in middle school. He started coming home and giving Lisa a hard time.
We realized that we were not dealing with an organization of rational, knowledgeable, and empathetic teachers and administrators; we were coping with a machine.
With all three of our children, we increasingly realized that we were not dealing with an organization of rational, knowledgeable, and empathetic teachers and administrators; we were coping with a machine. For a while, we tried to work with the Machine. We tried to change its speed, update its “software,” find a sense of compassion somewhere within its steel-toothed gears, help our kids to adapt to the Machine, help the Machine to adapt to them.. but in the long run, there we were, caught between our love for our children and our ingrained respect for the education process.
In all three cases the Machine just kept moving our, and many other, students down the conveyor belt, delaying decisions, ordering tests, and pushing them into ill-fitting boxes. No one seemed to care. For example, none of Emily's teachers had training for working with students with Asperger's, or even had a working knowledge of the syndrome. Some of them did not believe she had it. After all, she had an outgoing personality and “looked normal.”
One of Daniel's teachers did not believe in
