Teaching with Technology Book Review

 Introduction

The foundation for a core documentary, two leading experts, are sounding an urgent call to reimagine the American education so as to equip the students to embrace the realities of the twenty-first-century economy. Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith, the authors of “Most Likely to Succeed” want us to stop thinking that success for our children is based on the test scores, but instead start concentrating on actual learning, creative problem-solving, as well as the joy of discovery. Also instead of merely troubleshooting the challenges of our education system, the authors also provide a solution in the form of a fully re-imagining of what a high-quality education for all should look like. This book Most Likely to Succeed is very useful for everyone concerned about the success of our children in this 21st century. The book conveys this urgency while providing an inspiring perception of what the students, and teachers, need to do under the right conditions. This paper provides a detailed review of the book.

Discussion

This book is another very important one about success. This time it is not grit that is key for success for the children. It is also not even having a Tiger Mom or allowing the children walk home alone or letting them skin their knees that can make them thrive in this twenty fist century according to Wagner and Dintersmith. Also, it is not about supporting the children’s spiritual development or doing away with the gluten in their diets or even teaching them about the essence of team sports or white privilege. No, this new and bestselling book focused on the heart of parental anxiety by Wagner and Dintersmith embodies a detailed argument that the only way to make sure that there is future security for our kids is to completely upend the education system and reevaluate the purpose of schooling.

Wagner and Dintersmith’s incisive article slices via the politics to signify, without pointing fingers how the schools should refocus their attention to prepare the kids for their future jobs.  The book offers a searing and urgent indictment of the current damaging priorities of the American education system and a fully grounded as well as a practical vision of how to re-imagine the system for the world in which we live now. The authors use plain language to tell it the way it is and how it ought to be if the American students, civil, and economic democracy are to survive and thrive in the 21st century. They cut through the noise as they demonstrate how the America’s education system should transit from a myopic focus on the high-stakes testing to focus more on preparing the students holistically for life, college, citizenship, and career.

The authors call for systemic changes in the education system to make sure that the teachers are provided with the time and right tools as well as the trust they need to empower children with a passion for learning as they also teach critical skills the students require in the twenty-first century economy.  Their claim is that today, more than ever, academic achievement is being prized thus pressuring the kids to get into good colleges and attain the highest GPAs and even pursue advanced degrees. But, while these students graduate with credentials they lack the competencies that are required to be thoughtful, to get good jobs and deliver a workforce for a nonexistent world, and be engaged citizens.  They say that America’s methods of schooling have crushed the creativity as well as the initiative the young people require to flourish in the twenty-first century.

The authors, who are also technology experts often use the word “disrupt”  to argue about how the new revolution of the education system should affect the current system that is relevant for the 19th century that is already past. Wagner works at the innovation lab in Harvard’s Innovation whereas Dintersmith in a venture capital that funds education and technology start-ups. Their argument is this: the public education system in America only focuses on antiquated late nineteenth century aspects, on the necessity “to educate several immigrants and refugees working in farms for basic citizenship as well as for jobs in the industrial economy.” according to these authors, most of the stuff the teachers force children to know, that also form the basis of our culture’s sense of achievement are unnecessary in this age of Internet of things and Google.

Wagner and Dintersmith say that tests and test-makers are still running the show of the education system, and ten children are required to “jump via the hoops” as they repeatedly drill to assimilate reams of content or facts rather than learning the skills that will help them find employment or be employable for years to come, meaning, the skills to make them entrepreneurs. The nation has dedicated a modest amount of attention to the schools and their purpose, but that is not being done based on the evolution that is taking place in the area of technology. The authors say that education must help the students to build a soul after teaching children to think.  They also add that the ultimate goal of education if to erect the cathedral of knowledge and wisdom and not just about getting a big paycheck.

After the revolution imagined by Wagner and Dintersmith, the college will no longer be a scandalous and expensive universal requirement, but it will be an option for students who are the most academically minded. These technology gurus propose an overhaul of the current SAT scoring system whereby the adolescents are being sorted into various categories of collegiate preparedness that they say, “In Good Shape,” “It Will Not Be Easy” and “Think Different.” They say that the ones in the last two categories can be satisfied, and even better served, by opting for vocational training or in free/low-cost apprenticeships. The ill-formed perceptions of our culture that it is the students who excel in school and graduate from the top colleges who are most likely to succeed in their lives and workplace should be done away with.

According to the authors, it is clear that American education has been overemphasizing on test scores and grade-point averages while ignoring the deep curiosity as well as creativity that is the foundation of real learning. The authors suggest many disruptions that should take place in the current education system in America. Those disruptions include an interdisciplinary approach; a hands-on or practical, project-based learning; and student-directed curriculums that have already been implemented in some of the best schools in the country. I think that their assumption that undergirds the whole story that everyone can or must be molded into an entrepreneur is not as convincing.  I think that it is not possible to model everybody into an entrepreneur but everybody can succeed in life even though they were not so good in class.  And also, an entrepreneurial set mind is not the key to success.

The book is also supported with real-life examples of inspiring cases, such as the one that describes a young woman known as Rebecca, who, while she was in high school, she neglected her A.P. classes to work on a research project and later also ditched Harvard to open her company.  They quote Rebecca’s statement that “If we can reach children earlier, “maybe we could be having hundreds of people who could be entrepreneurs in their early 20s.” This t together with many other cases form their basis of the argument that imparting entrepreneurial skills in a kid while she is young can help the kid to grow up with a success-oriented mind. They, however, say that this cannot be achieved by using the old-fashioned teaching techniques of the nineteenth century that are in play in the current education system.

The authors also say that the current employers emphasize on, and are obsessed with the credentials even when they are increasingly becoming irrelevant in light of real-world employment.  Perhaps the credentials are being sued because they are the tangible and they are what the country has utilized for a long time basically to determine who is smart and who is not. What is being experienced however in the world of business where the focus is on results and outcomes is a quick transition from the conventional academic credentials to finding better ways of assessing the core competencies of the applicants. The authors also write about the Y Combinator as a way of moving away from the credentials to the more skills-based assessment of one’s suitability for the job. According to them, this transition from false credentials to more genuine competencies that cannot only be observed but also assessed is the most crucial move we are witnessing in the workplace.  They claim that this is what is likely to transform education.

Thus, the authors have an outcry for the transformation of the education system so that it is more relevant to the needs of today’s era.  As they say, gone are the summer holidays and the civics yore lectures in the scenarios when the students could attack meaningful and engaging challenges as they form their points of view. The authors use bullet lists, screened boxes, charts, and tables to provide a convincing argument that the education system in American is really in a mess and there should be a retooling of parts of the system

Conclusion

Most Likely to Succeed book presents a new vision of the American education system, one that puts creativity and initiative at the center of the learning process and also prepares children for today’s economy. The book provides the parents and educators with a fundamental guide to getting the best from their kids and a roadmap for opinion leaders and policymakers. The issue the authors have determined is a real one, although there is no single system can work for everyone, and the authors presume that Rebecca or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs (or Wagner or Dintersmith) are the ultimate desirable models of success. This leaves whole classrooms with gifted memorizers as well as regular humans who never aspired to be or can never even be a Bill Gates. Although it does not offer a clear roadmap on how to go in making every child become an entrepreneur, the book is a commendable prose for the teachers and policy makers in the education system, and I think that if implemented it can improve the education system by a great deal.

References

Tony, W., & Ted, D. (2015). Most likely to succeed: Preparing our kids for the innovation

era. Washington, DC: Simon and Schuster.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in online nursing papers if you need a similar paper you can place your order from medical essay writing service online.