I am the first to admit and acknowledge that I have a lot of formal education and that there are benefits to that education. At the same time, I also know that formal education laid a foundation that I was able to build upon only because of lived experience.
I learned to teach by teaching, I learned to run a school by being a school principal and I am currently learning how to run and operate an educational non-profit, but running and operating an educational non-profit. When I talk about City of Bridges High School , the statement that always gets the most head nods is when I say, “We all learn best by doing, especially when we are doing real work that has a positive impact on real people.” As adults we understand that the practice of life is multi-disciplinary, convoluted, cyclical and inherently messy. The unfortunate reality of our educational spaces for is that they all too often approach learning as siloed, standardized , linear and necessarily quantifiable. The life train and the school train are on two different sets of tracks.
I recently had the opportunity to read Tom Vander Ark’s article on Olin College of Engineering, How to be Employable Forever, the whole article is worth a read but there is one particular passage that I wanted to share in full:
“Education for the innovation economy is not just about knowledge and skill, argues Miller (Richard Miller, President of Olin College of Engineering and Design), it’s about mindset–collaborative, interdisciplinary, ethical, empathetic, entrepreneurial and global.
Developing these mindsets means an education that asks a new set of questions:
- Identity: who do you believe you are?
- Agency: what are you confident you can actually do?
- Purpose: how will your life make a positive difference?
What replaces narrow, specialized courses? Miller advocates for more global, complex, multidisciplinary challenges.”
This mindset and approach is proving to have great benefits for college age engineers and designers, and there is no reason that it cannot be applied to younger students, especially at the high school level. We also have to ask ourselves how do we extend these mindsets and values beyond the disciplines of engineering and design. If you are an artist, who do you believe you are? What are you confident you can actually do? and how will your life make a positive difference? The same question can be asked regardless of the path you choose.
So the question we need to ask ourselves is how might owe design lived experiences to foster this potential for people of all ages?