Too often when I talk to kids who graduate from college, I hear: “I don’t know”. I had asked, “What are you going to do with all that education? They don’t know or say something menial or average as, “I guess, I’ll get a job.” They want to get hired by someone who will tell them what to do with their education. They have no clue, no experience, no training and probably no education on what to do with knowledge.
Knowledge is power! Now, that is a big bunch of puck! Knowledge is potential power and nothing more. It seems, no one is trained or experienced in releasing it and using it for a productive use. It’s not what you know, it’s what you do with what you know, that counts. For a lot of people, it doesn’t count. They are just big bags of knowledge sitting here and there like lumps of jello hoping someone will tell them what to do.
What are you going to do today? I don’t know. What are you going to do this weekend? I don’t know. What are you going to do next? I don’t know. Does all this, “I don’t know”, sound like a well educated college graduate? Educated? I thought they were smart.
It seems like, as a college graduate, they would be prepared and ready to take on the world. They would have goals, plans, strategies and things in the works for taking that knowledge and doing something great with it. But that doesn’t seem to be the result. College give a person a statistical advantage, but I’m not so sure it gives them an experiential advantage.
Hey, a lot of the business successes didn’t even finish high school or college. It’s like all that knowledge isn’t really all that important. Maybe, all those students are right. Maybe all that knowledge really isn’t that important. Maybe you won’t ever use it after all. Could it be all that powerful potential power of knowledge isn’t all that valuable. Maybe, it’s what you do, with what you know, that is most important, maybe? What you do, how you do it, when you do it, where you do it, with whom you do it, might be what should be taught.
If we started training kids to do something with their education, maybe by middle school or at the very least high school graduation, they would know some specific things they were going to do with their knowledge. College grads should be on fire with excitement with the things they are going to do. Training the release of all that potential power needs to be taught, guided and trained.
But that’s not the worst. They teach classes and the students don’t know what to do with their knowledge, but even worse, they are ineffective and inefficient in getting the knowledge. They can’t read, they can’t take notes, they can’t analyze, they can’t synthesize, but so what. Throw more knowledge at them. They didn’t get that, so? Throw more knowledge at them. Are the teachers and the administrators slow or something? If you have a jug you are filling with water, you can’t pour very fast or it will spill out (wasted) on the floor. When you go into most schools, it looks like they have been flooded. There is so much knowledge on the floor, it is up to your knees and maybe a teaspoon of knowledge is in all the jugs. But it doesn’t really matter as the jugs aren’t going to do much with their drop of knowledge, anyway.
Hey a teaspoon of knowledge gives a jug an advantage over the jug that doesn’t have anything in it. Yippie! Wait, that teaspoon is gold. It has all the answers to the standardized tests. This is a good teaspoon, but what are they going to do with it? >>>> nothing! Maybe we should test more, still doing nothing with their teaspoon.
Oh, I get it! Jugs are fixed. You can’t change them, you just have to work with them. Let’s get clearer standards so we can get the better test answers in those jugs. We need to be sure they have this specific answer in there, this way and in this context. Now, we have the right answer. It would be despicable if one of the jugs thought, analyzed and gave an answer that was originally wrong.
No wonder! Doing something means you have to make mistakes, be wrong and make things messy. We can not have messy. We can not have mistakes. We can not have wrong. No! No! No! That would lower our scores. We need to train our students to never, ever go down the messy road to doing something with their knowledge.
Besides we have so much knowledge to spill on the floor, we don’t have time to let things get messy. Even getting the teaspoon of knowledge in the jugs is hard, but we can’t waste too much time there either. We will try. We will try one or two times, then give up and move on. We need to train our jugs to try, at most one or two times, then they must move on. Never, never, never keep going, past two tries. There is just too much knowledge to spill on the floor.
What are you going to do with your teaspoon of knowledge in your jug, I ask. They respond, “I don’t know.” Now, it makes sense. They have never been trained and they don’t have that much useful knowledge in their jug anyway. In fact they have been trained to give up and move on with at the very most two tries. Now it makes sense. The jugs have no skills to capture much knowledge, small openings, and they have been trained to give up doing anything with it!
So what should we do? “I Don’t Know!” ….. just kidding! Even though, I am a product of that system, it doesn’t take too much observing to see something needs to be done. Let me start with the goal of getting capable students, excited about education and training; filled with ideas and actions making the world a better place with what they know. Excited about life, capable and eager to engage in life, have things they want to do and accomplish and have a plan, strategy and a first step.
Could you just imagine how good it would feel to be a student with the skills, the training to release the potential power of their knowledge. Especially if they had the skills and training capture as much of this potential power as possible. Potential Power and skills and training to release the power. Instead of being overwhelmed by knowledge, our students would overwhelm knowledge with production! Their production would pull forward knowledge and turn the knowledge iceberg upside down.
If we start in kindergarten and keep training the skills, techniques and their creative methods to use their knowledge, they are going to make lots of mistakes. It's going to be messy and they are going to do it wrong a lot. Did I say a lot!!! It is said the road to success is abundant failure with little wins that must be held onto and put together for success. How can it be set up for schools to handle this?
Would our society and schools potty train our jugs? No, that mess is for the parents or someone else to clean up. What if the students were trained to be responsible for their actions and even the clean up of their potty training messes? Would that work?
Before I attempt to put teachers out of business with all the ways a student could get knowledge, I’d like to address the process of addicting students to growth. That’s right, addiction. Could you imagine children waking up each morning, excited, jazzed, can wait to get started on their education, training and growth. You know, just the opposite of the heels dug in resistance you find with forced, mandated education. Does that mean students would be allowed not to go to school? ….. does your local junkie find his supplier? … can you count on it?
Let’s first set it up so education, training and growth was made very, very rewarding! We creatures of habit do what is rewarding and attempt to do what is rewarding again and again and again. More on making education, training and growth rewarding, but would you do what it takes to be a hero to your family and friends if you could? …. If you were capable, trained and knew what to do to be a hero? No more being just a jug with a teaspoon of test answers. It’s time to be trained to do something amazing with what you know, be a hero. This starts in kindergarten.
They can only be heroes if they do it. Only, if parents, teachers didn’t steal the opportunity, the responsibility and to do the hard work. What if they learned to take responsibility for their goofs, falls, messes, clean up along with their success. Trained to never, never, never give up until done. Not knowledge, but doing something with knowledge is something that they can be powerfully proud of. That’s right, the character of the person is so much more important than the teaspoon of knowledge they don’t know what to do with. Doing something with their lives will light them on fire and addict them to becoming all they can be.
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