What a great topic, and how surprising it is to experience the word, “joy” within the context of innovators, scientists, and problem solversJ

Before analyzing the good or bad of our educations systems, I have to ask, “to what end”. That is to say, to what end are we educating? What do we want from employees or workers at the end of the day? That’s where we need to start, at the end.

When I consider a new hire, I am looking for just about everything other than what is normally taught in school. Sure I want someone who understands the basic subject. But, are they also trainable? How are they with co-workers, with social interaction, their attitude??

What about values? What do they care about? How much mental and emotional baggage are they carrying with them. Shall I measure locus of control, too? For that matter, why not train to increase locus of control as the measure of success?

Now, let’s dig deeper and ask, what is the purpose of our existence? What are the common values we can hold together, and always ask ourselves, are we working together to obtain or maintain those values? Read the edicts of the United Nations sometime. You have to ask yourself, which planet are they talking about, because no nation on our planet is coming close to measuring up to the goals of the UN.

Therefore, I believe first we need to identify the end result of what it is we want to achieve, both in physical terms, and in terms of the feelings we want to experience. In the cycle of, “be’, ‘do’, ‘have’, I say focus on the ‘be’, which will lead to what it is we need to ‘do’, and from that we will ‘have’ the result.

So I ask, can we agree on a few things that we want for society, i.e. the end result, and then figure on the ways to achieve this, including through education, and/or school? If done right, the joy will come, and we will educate in a way that brings us the result we want.

I am describing a paradigm shift. If you simply want to make minor improvements to the education system to start, then go to the many examples of great education systems that are working and create creative outreach programs to scale these up. I think some people are going to want to work in these smaller, and no less important, incremental improvements, while others like me prefer to work on the paradigm shift, both being valid.