Jason Hiner of Tech Republic has been on a bit of an innovation focus of late. I follow Hiner because he looks at technologies impact in a much broader perspective than most people and he has a very pragmatic attitude toward where he believes technology can take society. I was intrigued by his post regarding Da Vinci and the Theil’s “Twenty Under Twenty” fellowship which provides $100,000 over a two-year period to young people with big ideas to drop out of college and pursue to their dreams. Hiner like many others in IT and the Academy initially scoffed at Theil’s fellowships but upon further reflection and consideration he admits to seeing some merit in encouraging young people to pursue their dreams. The link to Da Vinci brings in the notion that one of history’s greatest innovators did so through observation, trial and error. Da Vinci did not receive a traditional classical education and many people speculate that if had been trained in this way he may not have come up with the ideas that he had.
Like Hiner I am not willing to “throw education under the bus” so quickly and go onto suggest that, if done well, education should actually help to stimulate the creativity and innovation in the Da Vincis of the future. Doing education well means that we move away from focusing on the recipe and regurgitation and standardized testing that is so fundamental to the American system and focus on creating environments in which our learners learn how to learn through “real world” projects that require the creation and application of innovative solutions. I think it is criminal that if we want real innovation we need move outside of our educational system to allow students to follow their passions and dreams in programs like Thiels.
We need to be doing this within our educational system and I hope to be in a position very soon to start working on the process to start putting innovation into our educational system. This means that our educational system will need to radically change–when you consider the fact that there are so many people calling for this type of change perhaps the timing is right…
