Ready for action, not glimpses

To work within the system for change or to work from outside the system because the type of education now needed would require changes that are too far a departure from the current norm?  That is the question.

Hamlet didn't have the only dilemma facing him.  The current model for education has produced a lot of people who have progressed our society.  But, the product produced by that good system has yielded to even newer products, like Bill Gates and Steven Jobs, who didn't use or trust the current system.  They took what it had to offer, junked a lot of it, and blazed their own trails.  The system is broken and in need of fixing.  Gates for one, has opted to stand behind ventures like Kahn Academy through YouTube, and other reform efforts.  Perhaps someone from Generation X, like Alex Kipman of Microsoft, can continue taking young minds and reinvent a system that doesn't have to be circumvented, but used as a vehicle for progress.

I would expect that more schools all over the globe will begin to pop up to try to solve the dilemma of what modern education should be and offer.  I have a feeling that more virtual schools than brick-and-mortar schools will exist within 5 years from now.  I have many indications that the new learning won't happen with books, but with demonstrations, simulations, projects, experiences, and trekking all around the world through virtual reality.  A good geography class, for instance, would suffer irreparably if it used a book instead of all of the pictorial venues available in both true and virtual life.  It would be a travesty to learn geology from written pages given the availability of all the websites and software for use in studying the nature of the Earth, below and on the surface.  And who could learn about the majesty of space and all it has to offer from written pages when Hubble, Kepler, and numerous satellite probes, such as Curiosity, have turned science upside down with what they see?  It would be a travesty if written curriculum continued to be followed in light of all the captured and simulated videos, video games and guides and holographic opportunities in the hands of the youth.

Time moves on. At one time Copernicus taught us new ideas, Newton gave us new insights about the physics of the world in a time after that,  DeBakey offered hope for millions with transplanted hearts 200 years following that, and Jobs put the world in our hands in our lifetimes.  They were at the right time, in the right place.  But it is now, not their time.  Time has moved on.  Who among those in education will take the valiant and lonely step within to radically alter the path to globally compete and lead?  Who outside of education will blaze a new trail for others to follow that will lead to the next quantum leap in civilization's march to a much better, even if less familiar, way of life?

A million people will join you, whoever takes the position of Pied Piper, playing the right tune.  Elon Musk is taking us to Mars and giving us cars to run on regenerative energy.  Who will elevate the game of education into a productive, visionary force driving the engine for tomorrow's better society?