We Need an Education Revolution for Virginia and America
Our system of education was built for an industrial economy of mass production and equal outcomes. There is no "reform" that can fix the current system. We need to evolve and create an educational system for today and tomorrow.
What are we facing with education today?
Our education system was created over 100 years ago. It was designed based on the model of a mass production factory that created standardized things in large quantities. It worked in the 1920s and 1930s, and for many decades, because most people lived in a standardized world. Career options were limited. Sources of news and information were limited. Hence, outcomes were fairly standard.
However, as time has gone on, technology has changed everything. Most people have unique family and living experiences. People have access to more knowledge, and vastly different sources of news and information. What's more, technology has diversified career opportunities beyond what the education system of the early 1900s was designed to support. This has created a growing knowledge and skills gap in our children, which has hit economically disadvantaged and minority communities especially hard.
To improve education, our politicians made higher education easier to access. This meant our colleges and universities needed to fill the gaps our mass public education system created. The result is over $1.6 trillion in student debt that is growing, and millions of young people who are not ready for the economy of tomorrow.
How can we fix education?
We need to get at the root of the problem, not throw money at the end when it is too late. In order to fix education, we need to change our education system. We need to move from one that is designed to standardize learning outcomes to a new system designed for an age of unlimited information, mobility, personalization, artificial intelligence and virtual reality.
We need an education revolution that emphasizes personalized learning, project-based assessment instead of standardized tests, and allows our children to explore the arts, music, engineering, the environment, history, technology and more.
We need an education system that tears down boundaries based on wealth, race, gender and geography and allows the youth of today to become the dreamers, inventors and leaders of tomorrow. This is how we will change generations of poverty, and build skills for the economy of tomorrow.
