Historically there might have been good reasons for this.

Firstly employers wanted this because they needed a whole bunch of people who would turn up to work each day and do what they were told to do.  Secondly, the government needed this because it collects the bulk of its taxes from working people.

Problems with the Current School System

But this system of producing wage slaves will not help our kids as they start working in the digital age.   The problems I see with the current school system include:

1. Our current education system punishes failure

You get something wrong, you get an “F” or marked as failure.  School kids grow up thinking failure is bad.

But in the real world, you learn by making mistakes.  In some areas of business, the smartest thing to do is fail fast.  Learn what does not work and pivot quickly and try something else.  To create something in the new digital world, you need to be prepared to make mistakes, otherwise nothing new will ever get developed.

And if we have drummed into our kids that failure is bad, how many will be prepared to take the risk of failure?  I have to ask, is this focus in school on failure being bad, a reason why youth suicide is increasing?

I also don’t get the change between pre-school age and school age.  Pre-school age, our child falls over when they try to walk or ride a bike.  How many people would mark their child as a failure after the first try and tell them not to bother trying any more.  No-one I know.  So why do the same people accept this for their kids once they are school?

2.  At school, all measurements are focused on the individual

Rarely in the real world does an individual achieve success by themselves.  Sure you may have an athlete achieve individual glory like a gold medal at the Olympics, but you can sure bet there was a whole team behind them.

3. School punishes people for cheating

For copying off others.  But in the real world, collaborating and working with other is the quickest and best way to be successful.  Our kids don’t need to re-invent something we already have, they need to improve upon it.

4. School sets up the expectation that a person should be good at everything

They should be a jack of all trades as it is their combined score that matters.  But in the real world, you need to focus on your strengths and what you are good at.  Should you really care if your plumber can’t tell you what some Shakespeare play was all about?  Don’t get me wrong, I love books.  But when I finish say a Tom Clancy novel, I don’t sit there and wonder what he meant in passage X.  I just want an exciting read and if it’s not I put it down.

5. We are focused on rote learning

And, from what I have seen in some comparisons with other countries, the Australian school system is very shallow and focused on rote learning.  We may be teaching people about science for example, but we are not teaching our kids to think like a scientist.  In the digital age, the key skills people need are problem solving skills.  Not the skills to learn how to do something by rote.

People pay to get problems solve.  And the bigger the problem, the more you get paid.  If our kids don’t know how to solve problems, what hope do they have of being paid long term?

What do we need to do?

So in my opinion the Australian school system is still in the industrial age, focused on producing wage slaves.  And if we want a future for our younger generation, our education system needs to shift toward the digital age and focus on:

• An individual’s strengths
• That failure is not bad, it is just another way of learning.
• Collaboration, team work and problem solving skills are an essential outcome of the learning process.

And whilst school industry partnerships can help, we need more programs like the http://www.startup.business/ to help teach our kids to be more entrepreneurial and develop solutions to tomorrow’s problems.

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The Wealth Navigator

wayne@thewealthnavigator.com.au

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