Rethinking Education in a Flat World
Betsy Bedigian
Marketing & Communications Manager
More than 4,000 higher education leaders attended Tom Friedman’s key note address at the recent Campus of the Future meeting. “Something big happened while I was sleeping. The global economic playing field is being leveled and the U.S. is not ready,” Friedman said. The heads nodded in agreement, yet agreement on the implication for postsecondary institutions remains elusive.
By now, many are aware of the flatteners Friedman describes “as
significant as Gutenberg’s printing press,”—the impact
felt near and far, changing the dynamics of the economy and social structures,
including education. With the fall of the Berlin wall, the passing
of the millennium, new collaborative platforms, the upstart of outsourcing
and off-shoring, open-source software development, supply-chain management,
the advent of ‘insourcing’ and advanced digital information
tools (is there anything left out?), the world leveled-out. Friedman points
out that the convergence of a digital world with shifting global economic
power has transformed education needs. Not only does society need
more education, but also the right education.
What is the right education for a knowledge society? According to Friedman, value is created in the ability to horizontalize—move from ‘command and control’ to ‘connect and collaborate.’ Friedman describes the essential characteristics of a flat world workforce:
- Great collaborators
- Great leveragers: The ability to leverage technology
- Great synthesizers
- Great localizers: The power of global platform to local conditions
- Great explainers
- Green: Anything eco-friendly
- Passionate personalizers: The ability to put chocolate sauce on vanilla
Here are the implications:
- Teach greater collaboration skills—the transition from vertical (command and control) to horizontal environment requires a society capable of collaboration across boundaries.
- Create a sustainable community of learning
- Cultivate the entrepreneurial spirit in all—In an Olympic job market, there is no telling what race one will enter. Individual success will depend on the ability to “learn how to learn,” according to Friedman. First place winners will have great teachers.
- Develop new constructs that teach synthesis skills—The ability to memorize is quickly fading in our information rich society where a Google search can return millions of references. Society needs more synthesizers capable of filtering divergent sources into a coherent, relevant whole in addition to new pedagogies to test skill acquisition.
As the recently released Commission on the Future of Higher Education report points out, America’s economic future hinges on its ability to provide its citizens access to high-quality and affordable education, learning and training throughout their lives. The growing number of pockets of creative energy seeking new ways to build a 21st Century education is evidence of a unified willingness to do what must be done. Only one question remains, says Freidman, “Will it be done by me, or will it be done to me?