Markham
Commentary

Monthly thoughts on partnering with the millennial generation

Web: http://www.thommarkham.com/
Email: thom@thomarkham.com

In this issue:

Making the World Round: Let's collaborate!

Resources Listed in this issue:  

The New American Story, by Bill Bradley

Radical Collaboration, by James Tamm and Ronald Luyet

Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions, edited by Jennifer Gidley and Sohail Inayatulah

Expanding Opportunities and Building Competencies for Young People: A New Agenda for Secondary Education, The World Bank

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Dear Colleague:

In my view it’s time to forward a worldwide conversation about education that has not yet taken place much in public, but which has begun to rumble through every country like a mega earthquake. I label the conversation ‘educating from within.’ At the core of the conversation is a basic fact: 50% of the world’s population is under age 25 and they will come to adulthood in a technological, globally linked world that the current generation of adults can barely foresee. Mostly, we respond to this millennial wave of youth using outdated assumptions, including the beliefs that children won’t learn unless subjected to a set of rigid standards, that schools exist to teach students to compete in a global economy, and that harnessing children to an ever-improved curriculum will finally, at last, force them to learn what they need to know.

None of this will work, or is working. I’m not the first to note this, but I do sense a new storyline emerging. First, we have learned that love, respect, and communication are better motivators than fear, meaning that educators must find ways to engage youth through personalized appeals to their dreams and aspirations. Second, youth want to cooperate, not compete. Hammering them with grim statistics about “losing the competitive edge” will yield little in the way of performance; if we want high achievement, we need to help them become skillful, knowledgeable, and passionate collaborators. And third, given the swirl of forces surrounding their lives, the children themselves—their very nature and being—is changing in ways we do not understand, meaning we had better inquire within about their state of mind and heart.

I invite you to join me in some occasional thinking about the millennial generation and how adults respond to a worldwide shift that requires us to customize learning for a global, transforming world.

-- Thom Markham, Ph.D.

Making the World Round 

In all my years as an educator, I have never heard an American student express the thought, “I can’t wait until I’m in the job market so I can beat the Chinese!” Yet U.S. schools, in their push for reform and performance, invoke competition and dominance on a regular basis. The current prevailing theory says the world is ‘flat’—that students from around the world enter the work world with equal skills. So, with the field now level, American students need to work harder to outsmart the other players—and win the race for the jobs of the future.

 I believe this competitive stick is ineffective, outmoded, even self-defeating as a means for motivating young people to learn. For one thing, international competition is the opposite of what appeals to today’s youth. Studies show that this is the most intimate and connected generation of young people in history—and those connections reach beyond geographic borders. A global youth culture has emerged of individuals who share tastes in music, fashion, and lifestyle—and who also think alike. The research also shows that youth in cities as diverse as New York, Seoul, and Caracas have more in common with each other than they do with peers in the their own countryside. This trend puts us squarely on the path to greater collaborative and synergistic efforts that could improve the quality of life on a global level.

 Many other people around the world would welcome a shift away from competition as well. Over the past two years, in addition to working with several hundred American educators, I’ve had the pleasure of leading workshops with teachers in Britain, Jordan, China, and Malaysia. In none of these places was competition mentioned as a key driver of educational reform or academic performance. However, a group of teachers in Beijing did stand and applaud when I mentioned the ‘C’ word. But it wasn’t competition that evoked their nods and smiles—the word was cooperation.

 Of course, in all countries educators agree that schools should be graduating skillful students who can qualify for the entrepreneurial, multifaceted jobs associated with an increasingly complex global economy. But why do the skills associated with high-performance work have to focus on competition? And, what if we helped young people acquire those skills by appealing to their sense of responsibility, both globally and locally? What if we tapped into the passion unleashed by service, collaboration, and contribution?

 I believe this would be an enormous motivator for increasing academic performance. At this moment in history, when we could all sink together if we don’t keep each other afloat, students yearn for idealism. They want a better world, and the pent-up demand for action after the last few years of drought is palpable in the world. Growing evidence suggests that students are headed toward a greater sense of service. For instance, a study released this month in California—often a bellwether for youth trends—reveals that students are not interested in winning races. Surprisingly, their goals center on home, marriage, religion, and career. In other words, they’re searching for a bit of peace.

 Now, to get a job that pays a mortgage in California requires skills, to be sure. But if we want students to learn to swiftly, knowledgeably, and cooperatively interact with anyone, anywhere, let’s have them practice collaboration on a regular basis. In fact, I would argue that if we want to teach problem-solving, encourage creativity, and graduate flexible thinkers—the goal of virtually every school in America—we have a much better chance of success if we get rid of the peculiar American notion of the lone individual clawing a path to the top. This old icon does not serve to educate students for the challenges of this century, in a number of crucial ways:

 ·           Structure of School. As James Tamm and   Ronald Luyet point out in their book, Radical Collaboration, success in the business world today requires well-developed collaborative skills. However, the typical classroom with its rows of desks facing a white board does not give students much opportunity to practice collaboration. This classroom arrangement, by the way, is a direct descendant of the Industrial Era, when society was focused on hierarchy and survival of the fittest. The result? A recent study of 2000 U.S. schools found that students spend most of their time during the school day either listening to lectures or working individually.

 To Do: Put students in circles, groups, teams, U-shapes—anything that approximates the way business operates today. Make the space in which they learn reflect the ethic we want to teach. Use project-based learning, Socratic dialogues, and team-based learning to teach the curriculum.

 ·      Citizenship and Civic Knowledge. Senator Bill Bradley writes in his new book, The New American Story, that we need an ‘ethic of connectedness’ to repair the rifts in American society and recapture the ‘can do’ spirit that helped build our country. Probably no one is more concerned with the decline in civic responsibility than teachers, who are determined to graduate civic-minded young people. But it’s hard to teach cooperation and a sense of the commons when the gurus of education continue to issue siren calls for a more competitive attitude among students.

 To Do: Speak up in favor of collaboration and teamwork at every opportunity, including global partnerships and cooperation. Don’t hesitate. You will be speaking for the next generation of leaders.

 ·      Dealing With Conflict. In an information-based world, opinions abound—and they travel fast. With so much information on hand, factions can develop and stall problems at any level—from the neighborhood to the United Nations. Finding solutions requires empathy and negotiation skills. These are not the staples of traditional education, which teaches students to be quiet until it’s their turn to talk. Without practice, students will find it difficult to learn a key fact of life: conflict is inherent in collaboration.

 To Do: Incorporate conflict into teaching through projects that require students to work in collaborative, high-performance teams. Assess their listening and empathy skills. Use performance assessments to gauge their abilities and skills.

 ·      Hot Intelligences. Psychologists identify the key intelligences as those that process ’hot’ information—signals concerning motives, feelings, and other domains relevant to an individual’s well-being. These include personal intelligences, such as the multiple intelligences identified by Howard Gardner. They also include social intelligences—the ability to interact successfully in diverse groups and situations—and emotional intelligence, which is gaining ground as a necessity for business and life. People high in hot intelligences know how to cooperate, act wisely in relationships, and identify the social-political dynamics of relationships. Howard Gardner lists Socrates, Jesus, Gandhi, and Eleanor Roosevelt as people who possessed this kind of intelligence. None of them was known as a competitor.

 To Do: In the classroom, operate outside the boundaries of narrow cognitive exercises. Don’t be embarrassed to clearly teach to the hot intelligences by putting students in teams; assessing their communication skills; challenging them with complex, open-ended questions; and giving them the opportunity and time to go ‘deep’ into issues.

 Perhaps the best thing we can do for our students is to remember that the skills of collaboration and creativity are no longer ‘soft.’. Instead, they should be seen as central to every young person’s success. We need to get better at teaching these skills—and that means championing a cooperative, service-oriented ethic among students, rather than a ‘win-lose’ mentality. Our job, in fact, is to help young people make the world more round, and not so flat.

Next month: Intelligence: Who has it and what is it?