September 3, 2024 • 59 mins
Can our current education system really prepare students for the 21st-century workforce, or is it stuck in the past? On this episode of Innovate Everything, we tackle the systemic flaws within the U.S. education system, drawing stark comparisons to prison environments that affect student behavior, teacher morale, and administrative effectiveness. We even share a curious anecdote about an Australian breakdancer's Olympic performance as a metaphor for these larger systemic issues.
Inspired by the legacy of the Industrial Revolution, we question whether our regimented, factory-modeled schools have become obsolete. By examining the historical context of our education system, we uncover how its core structure remains unchanged despite vast economic shifts. We propose a modern educational model that fosters critical thinking, tech literacy, and problem-solving skills—essentials for today's knowledge workers.
Looking ahead, we explore the future of education, emphasizing hands-on, project-based learning environments like Opportunity Central, which bridges the gap between theory and practical application. Highlighting the importance of early vocational training and career prep, we advocate for a curriculum that celebrates risk-taking, failure, and entrepreneurial thinking. Join us as we discuss the urgent need for educational reform to better prepare students for real-world job markets and the challenges they will face.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back to the Innovate Everything podcast.
I'm your host, john Mode, and Iam joined, as always, by my
co-host, katie Mode, and todaywe're going to talk about
education.
I don't think it's any mystery.
I don't think anybody disagreesor denies that our education
(00:22):
system here in the US is broken.
In Florida, we have recentlylast year or two the government
of Florida started givingcredits to families who want to
send their kids to privateschools, because there was a
statewide acknowledgement thateveryone doesn't want to go to
public school.
Right, and you can say what youwant about the wokeness and the
(00:46):
anti-wokeness or all thesedifferent things, and while
banning books will bringthousands and thousands of
people out to talk abouteducation for the first time in
a decade, right, the realproblem is the system and these
things like the books, thesethings like COVID policies, are
(01:11):
the giant zit on the face of thesystem.
It brings your attention.
It's hard not to see it.
Right, like that Austin Powers,you know guacamole thing.
Right, we see it.
Oh, my goodness, I can't helpnot see it.
But the real problem is thesystem itself.
(01:32):
And if you look at pictures Idare you go Google pictures of
school cafeteria versus a prisoncafeteria, a school playground
versus a prison yard forexercise classroom environment
next to a school classroomenvironment.
There's a reason they're sosimilar and we'll get into that
(01:52):
in just a minute.
As a whole our school system,student behavior is atrocious.
Right, we'll get into innovateparenting at some point, but
parents are a big part of that.
The detachment of parents hasput this burden on the school
system of raise my kids.
Teachers because they're kindof being asked to be parents are
(02:13):
tired of being blamed foreverything.
All of society's problems fallon the teachers.
Administrators focus more onmicromanagement than they do on
helping the teachers do theirjob as well.
Their administrators arewalking around classroom to
classroom to make sureeveryone's got the right posters
on the wall.
They're not saying teacher, doyou need help?
They're not saying teacher, howcan I help you educate your
(02:37):
class better?
They're not saying hey, teacher, where are the parents failing?
How can I push the parents tobe better?
Overall system is built off ofhigh stakes, testing, uniformity
, conformity, and that's justnot how the world works.
And you see things like theOlympics break dancer from
(03:03):
Australia.
I'm sure you've seen the memesonline there was, have you?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
So she's dressed in green, she's an Australian and
she does the worst breakdanceroutine you've ever seen.
No, I haven't seen it, actually.
I will show you.
Overall, there's this moment inthe Olympics where an
Australian breakdancer shows upon stage and the way they ran
breakdancing in the Olympics wascompetition style.
(03:31):
Someone did a routine and theother person responded to the
routine Like a dance battle yeah, like a dance battle and they
evaluated it on points.
The Australian breakdancer wasawarded zero points.
Everyone all over the internetis making fun of this person
because it was so bad.
It looked like me going out fora breakdancing fight not having
(03:54):
any idea what breakdancingshould look like.
Right Like I can't do the spinon my head or the rotations or
whatever, so I would end updoing weird things on the floor.
That's what that person did andyou ask yourself how does that
happen?
How do we get to this pointwhere this Australian
breakdancer is an Olympian.
How is she in the room withthese people?
Does Australia not have anyonebetter?
(04:15):
And as you?
look they do.
There's a lot of goodbreakdancers.
So how it happened is theOlympic Committee assigned the
WDMA or the World DancingAdministration, who is, I guess,
the foremost authority indancing but their number one
(04:35):
thing is ballroom dancing.
That's what they do.
Ballroom dancing gets snubbedfrom the Olympics that doesn't
make any sense and effectivelyreplaced with breakdancing for
this Olympics.
So the ballroom dancing peopleare like we don't make any sense
and effectively replaced withbreak dancing for this olympics.
So the ballroom dancing peoplelike we don't know any break
dancers, so they assignedregional break dancing
(04:56):
authorities to give me yourcompetitors.
Where in australia, we went alittle bit off the rails, right,
and so we're going to get towhat I'm talking about.
Just a second about schools.
Is they?
They reached out to theaustralian breakdancing league
or whatever.
Whatever it was called.
That doesn't, the name doesn'tmatter.
That league was run by thewoman and her, or was founded by
(05:16):
the woman and her husband, thewoman being our olympic
competitor, her husband beingthe coach for the Olympics.
And what happened?
Speaker 2 (05:27):
and how it was inside job.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
And that's what everyone's getting up in arms
about.
Oh, it's an inside job.
It's an inside job, but whatreally happened was she founded
this organization, so she waslike, hey, I'll throw the
competition.
And she threw a competition andit just happened to she was
above and above board, and allthat.
She threw the competition in avery difficult.
It just happened to she wasabove, above board and all that.
She threw the competition in avery difficult place to get to,
(05:49):
with a relatively reasonableentropy, lots of, with
relatively short notice, and thebig competitors couldn't make
it.
And so she won quote-unquote,fair and square, and therefore
became the person she bought shebought her way, yeah and then
and then the that that committee.
Now people will point out thatthis committee is no longer run
(06:11):
by her and her husband.
They're not even board members,but I bet you they do know them
.
They founded the committee.
I bet you they're friends,right?
And this lady ray gun is hername is now now competing for
Australia, makes an absolutejoke of herself, becomes a meme.
The reason I highlight thatparticular instance well, while,
(06:32):
yes, it's relevant, right, it'scurrently internet trending.
It also is there to point outthat when you look at the school
system today, a vast majorityof your school board members are
55 plus.
Their kids have long grown up.
(06:52):
They're not in touch withcurrent society of the children.
It's a low paid position withlong hours and lots of meetings,
so it tends to favor people whoare retired.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
It's an stagnation.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, and so you talk about someone who's running our
schools.
Now, there is value in wisdom,trust me, there's value in
wisdom.
But anybody who's in their 30swith young children and their
parents are watching their kidsfor the first time when their
kids are first born, you quicklyrealize how much of that you
forget just by not doing it.
(07:25):
Because your grandparents walkin the room or their
grandparents walk in the roomand they start to help with your
children and they go.
Oh, why is she crying?
And every parent at 30 goes tohungry crying.
It's obvious.
You can hear it right, becausewe're in that world.
Our parents are 30 yearsremoved from that world.
They've forgotten what a hungrycry sounds like.
(07:46):
Same as us when we were in highschool.
That's just all crying, right.
So they've kind of they'redetached from that.
It's been 15, 20 years sincetheir children were in education
.
So they're Secondary education,secondary education.
So they're detached, naturally.
And these are the ones who aresetting up the administration.
(08:07):
They're also retired lots andlots of time, right?
They also have a fair amount ofmoney.
They don't need the job, right.
So these school board members,they're elected officials and at
the end of each year, nearly70% of them are running for
re-election every year.
So it's the same people over andover and over again.
(08:27):
Now I know for me, when I losecontrol of something or I'm a
little bit detached fromsomething, the most accurate
representation I can get of howsuccessful that thing is is
reports and compliance.
So it's not these people'sfault necessarily that they're
(08:49):
detached, but they're focusingon reports and compliance.
So testing, and are theteachers doing exactly what we
say they're supposed to do?
There also tend to be wealthierretired people who wanted to be
in politics.
So, as our country has shownand we'll get to an innovate
politics episode one day older,wealthier people who are
(09:10):
interested in politics tend tohave agendas, which is one of
the reasons we say anyone who'sinterested in running as an
official is going to have anagenda.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Yeah, of course you wouldn't run if you didn't have
an agenda exactly well, and so Imean agenda, agenda in the
benign sense.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yeah, you're going to have alternate things that you
are looking for you want toaccomplish something.
Exactly, and so the fact that wehave these school board members
that are older, more detachedfrom the process, tend to follow
kind of the same trajectory inlife.
Where they are.
There are school boards thathave 40-something-old, 30 and
40-year-old board members thatare running it, that have kids
(09:48):
in school, but those tend to bethe school boards.
From my basic research.
I'm not in the educationalworld, but those tend to be the
people who are a little bit moredialed in and demanding changes
.
First and foremost, why is ourschool system that way, the way
it?
Speaker 2 (10:05):
is Thank you for setting the stage for us.
I think that we're due for aneducational reform, and I say
that because we're due for one,but I also think that this
should be something that happenson a revolving basis.
Our education system shouldconstantly be reforming as the
(10:26):
workforce needs shift, and thereason I say that is because the
public school system the way weknow it today has not changed
much since its birth in the late19th century.
And what was happening in thelate 19th, early 20th centuries
(10:51):
Industrial, Revolution.
Industrial Revolution.
So, I mean, I think a lot ofpeople are aware that there's
connection between theIndustrial Revolution and modern
education.
But for our listeners who maynot be well-versed, the United
States experienced a significantshift towards industrialization
.
During this time, and in orderto align with demands for a
(11:19):
rapidly growing need for factoryworkers and an evolving economy
, the public school system wasliterally born Before that.
Education accessibility wasvery limited, very irregular.
It was unaffordable for most ofthe population because most of
the population was agrarianessentially.
(11:42):
So it was really just reservedfor wealthy families to send
their kids to get a formaleducation.
And then the industrialrevolution really flipped that
on its head and now it's like,okay, we've got all these
factories, all thismanufacturing happening and we
have no one, we have noworkforce.
So let's set up a public,accessible system that churns
(12:05):
out workers.
And so our system was born.
And what's really interestingis, you know, when this system
emerged, the organizationalstructure of the school system
was built to mirror thestructure of the factory workday
.
Right, because the need wasworkforce.
(12:28):
So everything was designed to,to turn to, to, to prime these
kids into successful factoryworkers right down to the bell
ringing to let you know theshift ended.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, it's just changing the ring of a bell
that's a good example.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
And and and it goes deeper than that, right, I mean
it's you're talking about theregimen.
You know it's regimented, withspecific schedules, designated
periods for different activities.
This instills, you know,discipline, punctuality.
I mean the reason why our kidshave to be at school by a
certain time, not a minute late.
(13:05):
And what does that teach them?
It teaches them to respect thepunch card.
You've got to punch in, youbetter be there on time.
Same thing at the schoolthere's no grace for tardiness.
It also the segmentation ofthose time slots for various
subjects.
It parallels the division oflabor in factories as well.
(13:29):
So essentially, this highstructured routine primed
students to be the futureworkforce in manufacturing
plants and other highlystructured and regimented
factories.
And this system is still inplace today.
Our kids still have to be thereat a very specific time.
They switch on a veryregimented schedule.
(13:49):
They're expected to have thesehighly disciplined and
discipline's great.
I mean we're not saying thatthese are inherently bad traits,
it's just.
I think it's important torealize that this system that
we've all gone through, our kidsare now, if you have, kids are
going through, even if they'rein private school.
The private schools stillmirror the same organizational
(14:11):
structure.
There might be some deviationshere and there, but overall
there's a very definitive starttime, there's a very definitive
end time.
Everything is blocked.
There's a lunch block, all yoursubjects are blocked into very
specific times.
It's very structured and I justthink it's interesting that
nothing has changed since theindustrialization.
(14:33):
But we're not working the sameway anymore.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
You can't necessarily blame the, the people who are
running the show right, the, the, the clowns are running the
circus.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
We're not calling anyone in academia a clown.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
No, I'm just saying that the people who are raised
in this industrialized systemright that to them, right.
So you are a byproduct of yourexperiences.
You found that the blockschedule really helped you with
time management.
As you look back to the piecesof education that defined who
(15:08):
you are and what made yousuccessful, you're looking back
at the factory and saying, lookhow the factory helped me, and
so you want to implement thethings in the factory that
helped you.
So when I say the clowns arerunning the circus, I mean they
don't know anything but thecircus, they don't know anything
but this system, and the peoplewho think differently from the
(15:29):
system are naturally not goingto be as prioritized and as
heard.
I don't know about you, but myfriend group, a vast majority of
my friends who really enjoyedthe educational system, became
teachers.
A lot of those same people leftcollege and then got an
internship with the college andthen went into early education.
They like that.
(15:50):
That system works for them,they enjoy it, they appreciate
it, they see the value in it.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And there's nothing wrong with the structure.
It's just we have to realizethat the skills that kids were
coming out of school with in theearly 20th century were more
applicable to the work they weregoing into than maybe they.
It's not applicable the sameway today.
Yes, punctuality, you know.
(16:19):
Being regimented being, youknow.
Knowing how to operate on aschedule, having healthy habits.
They're good, but what are wemissing by hyper-focusing on
that type of regimentedstructure?
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah, and you're also talking about the factory.
The factory even since, like1979, there's a 35% decrease in
factories in the United States.
So the model that's buildingfactory workers are going out
into the workforce with nofactory jobs.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Exactly, exactly, and you know.
Okay, for those of you sittingat home saying, okay, okay, fine
, you can argue about thestructure and the organization
of public education, but whatabout the curriculum?
The curriculums are alwaysevolving, like.
Kids are getting a wider rangeof education now than they were
back in the late 19th century,early 20th century.
(17:13):
Sure, however, we have torealize that even the curriculum
, the core, the common core ofof secondary education reading,
writing and arithmetic werechosen because they would make a
competent factory worker.
(17:34):
So, yes, it's been, we'veexpanded.
The curriculums probably aremuch more comprehensive now.
Comprehensive now, and you knowwe have, you have to deep dive
into a ton of differentcurriculums at private versus
public, versus charter, versusMontessori, which we'll get into
some of that.
But I think we still need toacknowledge that public schools
(17:57):
were built, were born from theground up with the intention of
filling factories and, to yourpoint, there are no factories to
fill.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Yeah, and even so, let's zoom out right.
So, all right, we hear youInnovate Everything podcast.
What do you have to say aboutinnovating education?
Well, I'm so.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
I have so much to say .
Speaker 1 (18:22):
So glad you asked.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
We're not qualified, but we have opinions.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
We are opinionated and we could talk all day about
the qualifications we don't have, but what we are going to do is
focus on things that peoplehave done with qualifications
that they do have.
And when you look at, if youjust Google, just spend a moment
on Google and type ininnovative education, innovating
(18:46):
education, innovative schools,I have to say no one's Googling
anymore, they're ChatGPT.
Okay, ask ChatGPT what you'regoing to get ironically, chatgpt
is going to plug itself itselfis that most of today's
innovative education is notgenerally a change of the system
, not a change of the structureof the education.
(19:08):
It's incorporating ai, chat,gbt is like hey, I'm, I'm
marketable I can make yousmarter.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
I can make you so smart.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
So it's a focus on integrating ai and increasing
computer learning.
But your increase in computerlearning, your increase in AI,
is really just a digitizedversion of other classes that
were in the system.
So while AI can help you makemore efficient education and
computers will help you be morerelevant to today's society, the
(19:39):
structure of the education isstill off.
They're teaching you what tothink, not how to think.
And in today's modern world,where we are in this particular
world, you look at theconspiracy theorists for right,
you hear it all the time, right,and what they're saying is
we're sheep were.
(20:02):
Right, you hear it all the time, right, and what they're saying
is we're sheep.
And I, no wonder we're sheep.
We were.
We were raised in a factorysystem to be factory workers,
taught to be sheep.
We were taught to be sheep.
So no one can blame you thatyou're sheep.
But everyone's saying wake up,wake up.
And the only and again, the onlytime that we're dialing into
what's wrong with education iswhen they put books we don't
(20:22):
like on the shelves, or putbooks that we think should be on
the shelves or taken off theshelves.
Or, you know, we want the kidsto go to school.
They shouldn't wear masks.
All the things that wedetermine as a society are
crossing a line.
That's when we stand up.
Crossing a line.
(20:44):
That's when we stand up, but wedon't look at the structure,
because what you see onuniversity campuses forever,
since the dawn of the university, are protests and people who
are thinking and telling you howthey feel.
One side or the other doesn'tmatter right?
You've got students in thefraternity house.
I don't remember exactly wherethey were, but there was a
protest, anti-israeli protest,about Palestine.
(21:05):
That's their opinion.
They're expressing theiropinion.
Are they sheep?
Probably, but there's apro-Palestine protest.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
When those kids were approached and asked what do you
hear protesting, they said oh,we're protesting against Israel.
Okay, what about?
What's your position?
Oh, I don't know.
We were just told to come here.
A lot of them just didn't know,beyond the headline, what they
wanted to achieve, what theywanted to happen as a result of
their protesting.
They were just like oh, we werejust told to show up.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah.
And then you have somefraternity brothers, where these
pro-Palestinian protesters areapproaching an American flag and
they're going to pull down theAmerican flag and put up the
flag of Palestine, and you getthis small group of young men
who look at that situation andgo.
You know what?
Something feels wrong aboutthis?
I personally disagree with this.
(21:57):
I'm going to think for myselfand make a decision, right.
I personally disagree with this.
I'm going to think for myselfand make a decision right.
So, instead of going with thecrowd or saying, hey, not my
problem, they did not allow theAmerican flag to be taken down
and they've been paraded allover.
I mean, they were at one ofTrump's speeches, I mean they've
been paraded everywhere.
But that moment and that's whereyou see, in my opinion, true
(22:21):
revolution in a process is whensomebody stands up and says I
don't think this makes any sense, we shouldn't do this.
And and stops the.
The stops the factory line,right.
So we're going to stop thefactory line right, and this
isn't a political one side orthe other thing, it's a matter
of stopping the factory line.
(22:41):
How are we looking at thisfactory line and saying where
should it go?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Totally Sorry, I was lost in your story.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Lost in the sultry tones of my voice.
So how do we fix it?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah, let's, let's daydream a little bit.
Today, in the year of our Lord,2024, knowledge workers make up
the dominant workforce, and Ilooked this up.
So think fields such as tech,healthcare, finance, education,
(23:16):
media, research, et cetera, etcetera.
This is the dominant workforcetoday.
Right, it's not manufacturing,it's not factory work, it's
knowledge workers.
And for listeners who don'tunderstand what that term means,
it means anyone who works notin a trade, essentially.
(23:36):
So you could be in tech, youcan be in healthcare, you can be
in finance, you could be acomms person, you can be a COO.
It's someone who is probably onthe computer a lot and has to
wear a lot of different hatswithin their role.
That's essentially a knowledgeworker, don't worry tradespeople
will get to you in just aminute.
Yes, tradespeople are stillvital to the health and success
(24:00):
of our economy.
And have the right to beeducated and have the right to
be educated, but we want to lookat this from the perspective of
we're educating kids for thegreatest need, right?
Because that's where educationwas born from a need, a need for
factory workers.
So let's pretend that we'rebuilding the public education
system today, in this climate.
(24:21):
And if we were to do that, howdo we prime the next generation
to be tech literate, creative,multifunctional problem solvers?
What would that school systemlook like?
I have some ideas, but I'll letyou start, so I'm not taking
all the air out of the room.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Yeah, so well, first things first.
I think if we're building aeducation system of today, the
first and foremost and to me themost important piece is taking
into account the climate of theyoung population now, which is
work-life balance, so a schoollife balance.
(24:58):
One of the biggest frustrationsthat I had coming out from the
military and then out of collegewas the lack of structure, true
structure, in everyday workingenvironments.
Nothing about college preparesyou.
It prepares you for the day tostart at this time and end at
this time and then, like you,just kind of have to get some
work done between times when theclass is there, right, so your
(25:22):
assignments nothing reallyprepares you for working at all
hours, for you know learning howto balance not being in school
with your day-to-day life.
So, first and foremost, I thinkthat, while there has to be a
consistent structure, we show upevery day because these
teachers need to know and toshow up.
I don't think we should have afully remote school, because I
(25:43):
think socialization isincredibly important.
But so for me, this would be myfirst two things A more
flexible learning style as faras how the structure of the day
is run, decision-making amongstthe individuals who are learning
, being able to choose and picktheir curriculum, while keeping
(26:05):
the base similar to college,looking at those classes and
saying I think this is valuable.
And then the third piece isthat social element of this, of
the marketplace, right.
So making sure that we'rehaving discussions and we're
using our minds, because to me,on my personal side of this, I
think that the more we focusschool on developing people who
(26:30):
think for themselves, the lessof the rhetoric, the less of the
overarching messaging willaffect individuals, and I think
that if you do that, you'll havea lot more entrepreneurs,
you'll have a lot more kind ofone and two person businesses,
which I think will diversifycompetitiveness, will have
(26:53):
people working harder andworking better.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
I totally agree.
Flexible work was the first oneon my list too, got it.
Yeah, I nailed it and so werethe other ones.
I had them both on my list, allthree on my list.
But I think what is interestingyou brought up, college doesn't
prepare you for the rigorouswork that you're going to do
(27:17):
once you're employed do onceyou're employed.
But I think that was true 10years ago.
But I think today, with a lotof companies trying to help
their employees achieve greaterwork-life balance and the
workforce being more tuned towork-life balance, I kind of
envy anyone who's coming out ofcollege now or in the next
(27:37):
couple of years, because I feellike college really does prepare
you for work-life balance.
And think about it.
You create your own schedulefor the most part.
I mean, classes are offered oncertain days, but you build your
schedule.
You show up to a 60 to90-minute class and then in
between the time is yours.
You can either go back to yourdorm right away and study, or
(27:58):
you can wait and you can do itin the middle of the night or
over the weekend, or all at theback end of the semester, like
no one is breathing down yourneck.
It's like here's the materialdo what you got to do, you'll be
graded, end of story.
And I remember feeling verydiscombobulated coming out of my
collegiate experience andjumping into my career, because
(28:18):
I went from having so muchfreedom over my time and being
able to.
I was the owner of my time andthat that school life balance or
education, social life balancewas mine.
And then you go into work andit's like all of a sudden you're
stuck at a desk from nine tofive.
It was.
It was very, very unsettlingfor me and I think that with a
(28:41):
shift to hybrid work, remotework, higher emphasis on that
work-life balance coming out ofcollege now, if you're
graduating right now and you gowork for a company that has it
as a high priority and they'regiving you the flexibility to
work from wherever, whenever,you're going to transition so
(29:03):
much easier because you'realready doing that as a college
student, and so I think thatthat's just a really important
call I wanted to just to make.
But I think, yeah, I thinkcollaborative, flexible spaces
that promote project-basedlearning essentially.
So like think labs, I think weneed more lab-type environments
in schools.
(29:23):
Like we get to go and tinker inthe lab for science, but why
can't we also do that across allthe other studies, right?
Like see how the work is usedin an application, and be more
hands-on and get those veryspecific work environments
created for the kids.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
And I actually have a really good example of someone
who's doing that.
So there's a school calledOpportunity Central, and they
are founded by a company calledForney ISD and what they are is
a school that's built around theidea of entrepreneurship.
It's a high school and,effectively, what this building
is it's an old mall, and so thefirst floor of the entire
(30:05):
building is businesses, realbusinesses run by business
owners that are given a reducedrent so that they can run their
businesses out of the school'sfacilities and in exchange for
that reduced rent, they internhigh school students.
So the high school students godownstairs at certain points of
the day and learn how to run abusiness, learn how the
(30:28):
challenges that are with it,like they're.
They're.
They're technically probablyyou know, they're free labor, Um
, but they are learning how thisbusiness owner, what the
challenges I'm going through,are how I'm scaling all these
things, and from what I wasreading, it sounds like they
intentionally cycle thesebusinesses through with newer
kind of refresh them with newerbusinesses from time to time as
(30:49):
the businesses grow, Becausewhat you don't want, you don't
want a high schooler walkinginto a well-oiled machine and
being like, oh okay, if I own abusiness, I just set up these
things and it works right.
And I think that that's one ofthe biggest hurdles with
education even going to businessschool and college, that no one
(31:13):
prepares or isn't well prepared.
It's here are all the theoriesand the things that help you run
a business, but when you go andrun a real business, your time
is very, very different.
There's very little in theschool system you know, even in
college, that really preparesyou to be an entrepreneur.
That's why they say you getyour, you get your MBA in two
years by owning a business,because you just run a business
for two years.
And now I understand everythingthat they teach me in an MBA
(31:36):
because I, I saw it, I did itand I don't know if you can do
that in a classroom.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Yeah, yeah, and that's really cool.
That's cool.
I hadn't heard of it before andI think career prep and skill
training is a huge miss in ourschool system.
Again, we're not talking aboutspecific schools.
We know there's schools outthere that do this right, but
overall there needs to be justthe foundation.
(32:03):
I mean, our kids' school does agood job of this at the high
school level, right.
They introduce a vocationalprogram and I think by your
sophomore year you have to pick.
You have to pick something.
And the whole point is not toget you ahead so that way you
can get into the best schools.
I mean that does help, but it'smore to get the kids, kind of
(32:24):
you know, introduced to thesecareers.
What will they actually be likewhen they roll their sleeves up
and they get into the work?
And it helps them realize, like, do I really want to be a nurse
?
Do I really want to be a marinebiologist?
Whatever it is, they get themplugged in with companies.
They get them into is.
They get them plugged in withcompanies.
(32:44):
They get them into internships,they get them on the ground
floor and I think that that'shuge when you're talking about a
knowledge, worker, environment,economy, because it's a lot to
go through all this educationand then go into a university
and declare a major and thenrealize it's not what you
thought it was at all.
So having career prep not justlike, oh, here's like the
(33:07):
classes you should take if youwant to be an engineer, but like
here, go taste it, go out thereand see what it would be like
to be an engineer, because youmay not actually want to do that
.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
If, when I was in high school and even in college,
if I would have trulyunderstood what engineers do, I
would have gone oh you wouldhave been a great engineer
because I, up until up until Igot into the workforce and I
started meeting engineers, yeah,who did engineering things.
You know, product design and allon all those those individual
(33:39):
components, I thought allengineers did math for bridges.
I thought all architects drewpictures of houses and did math
too.
So I wasn't aware thatengineers are in product design.
Engineers are blowing things up, right, like you really don't.
Engineers are building movieprops, right.
There's engineers doing allkinds of really, really cool
(34:01):
things.
And I grew up, I was raised ina family with several engineers
and they were all computer guys,right, and so it was it's
electrical engineering, it'scomputer engineering, it's it's
very specific math, heavy work,and don't get me wrong, there's
math in all engineering.
But had I known that there were15 different kinds of engineer
(34:22):
and there were a bunch ofdifferent areas you can take
that and heck, you can be asalesman as an engineer, right,
I would 100 have got engineersright.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
You just didn't get the exposure and that's the
problem.
And there are.
There are industries that aredoing a better job of this.
Stem is a good example, like inmanufacturing, because you know
there is a huge drop inmanufacturing.
People don't want to go intomanufacturing because they think
dirty, grimy factory, which ishow it has been for a long time,
(34:54):
and so you know the STEM fieldis doing a better job of
infiltrating the school early.
The STEM field is doing abetter job of infiltrating the
(35:23):
school early, elementary leveland teaching kids what it means
to be in manufacturing andgetting give kids a really good
understanding early of what itwould mean to be XYZ.
I think it would.
It would help.
It would help produce awell-rounded students because
they've kind of looked around abit more and been exposed, but
it would produce a student whohas a better idea of where they
want to go.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah.
So I think I think if we're, ifwe're kind of overhaul of the
education system, I think thefirst and foremost, I think a
lot of things.
When you innovate them, youneed to start from the top down,
and so the first thing that Iwould say a massive change to
make is and this is a little bitof a foreshadowing to innovate
politics, but it is what it isis get the career type
(36:08):
administrators out of the system, put in people who are truly
doing these things.
There's nothing morehypocritical than the dean or in
all the professors in abusiness school, having never
run a business.
They're purely educationalpeople and and you see that in
some institutions where the dean, the, the person who's teaching
entrepreneurship at the, at abusiness school, have never even
(36:31):
started a business and it's andyou know so they're teaching me
theories off of theories thatthey learned themselves in the
same setting.
Right, and then you get ateacher who was an entrepreneur
and they laid out gritty.
One of the most valuable thingsthat ever happened to me in
education was I was our marinebiology major when I first got
(36:51):
into college and I walked in thedoor I think it was chemistry
100.
And the teacher asked.
The professor said who wants to, wants to be like what do you
want to be in here?
What does each person in theroom want to be?
And he went person by personand they said I want to.
I want to study the behavioralpatterns of sharks, right?
Speaker 2 (37:14):
they said okay, great , we were in chem 101.
They're probably all pre-pharmmajors well, I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
I think it was chemistry, but he was going
through um and there were somepharmacists in the room as well,
so, but he was the.
I want to study the, you know,behavior patterns of sharks.
Okay, great, you're going to dofour years of college, um, then
you're going to work in a labfor three years and then you're
going to go and do some kind ofspecialty education and then you
need your phd and he kind of hewalked you through the
trajectory of where, where yourcareer would have to go to get
(37:41):
there, which is a shame becauseyou're already started.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, I mean, thank God it was early, but it would
have been great to know that asa as a sophomore in high school.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Exactly and right.
And so he did the same thingwith um, with pharmacy majors
Right, you're going to do this,you're going to do this, you're
going to do this.
And he laid out the trajectory.
But every single science-basedclass was the only way to get
where you want is one of twoways Get funded, have someone
just throw money at you to dowhatever it is you want to do,
or go work in a lab for fouryears and study the drift
(38:13):
patterns of crab eggs.
The dream unlocked.
That's what's going to get youto that next step.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
That's what's going to get you to that.
Next specialize in something soobsolete that you are the only
person who has any knowledge ofthat area.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
And then it will and find a way that the drift
patterns of crab eggs interactwith sharks.
And then go hey, I'm an expertin this weird little thing.
And then, and then, plug onnational geographicographic?
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Or it's Discovery.
Now I think Discovery yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
But so there was such a value in that conversation,
taking those people right.
And Steve Jobs kind of famouslysaid the best managers are
people who didn't want to manage.
They're individual contributorswho feel they have to lead
because everyone's screwing itup right.
Yeah, to lead, becauseeveryone's screwing it up right.
(39:02):
And so take those people, findthose people, put them in the
administration, let them helpdictate what will benefit us
right.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
So I think that's step one, because they're not
interested in micromanagement,they just want the job to get
done.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Well, and they just want accuracy in the process.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
So another really big innovation that I think the
school system needs.
Oh, I have a couple, but Ithink this one's really
important.
I think that social emotionallearning is really important and
completely lacking, especiallywhen we talk about needing
emotionally intelligent leadersin industry.
(39:35):
Full stop, right.
We want to put a higheremphasis on soft skills so the
next generation can effectivelycommunicate with an
interconnected and diverseworkforce, and we're just not.
I mean, it's a shame that myfirst interpersonal
communication class was incollege.
(39:55):
Like why is this not beingintroduced at I don't know third
grade level?
Like how do we talk to eachother, how do we be empathetic?
How do we have boundaries?
Like these are all reallyimportant life skills that, yes,
you should be learning at home.
We're not absolving parents.
You know it's not the teacher'sresponsibility to create
well-rounded humans, but you'retalking about a place that these
(40:18):
kids are spending six, eighthours of their day, like there.
There are skills that we canstart, we can bake into the
curriculum that will teach thatemotional EQ, the emotional
intelligence that will servethem in the workforce later.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Yeah, and there's actually there's plenty of
studies that have proven thatschools that focus almost
exclusively on soft skillsversus schools that focus
exclusively on educationalspecifics, the soft skill
students had higher SAT scoresor more successful in life,
because soft skills are thatimportant.
And I think, in a world that'sgetting increasingly more and
(40:54):
more digital, soft skills arebecoming less and less needed
and therefore the people whohave them have a leg up.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
You mean, they're getting more and more needed.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Well, they're getting less needed because we don't
necessarily need soft skills tosit on the other end of the
computer and not be seen, but wedo need soft skills to interact
with human beings Always.
I think what we will see in thenear-ish future is a return to
in-person everything.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
But I think also in the technology age they're still
highly applicable.
These skills right, you canteach them differently.
For example, you know when wewere in school.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
I'm sorry.
I was just thinking of acollege 101 class called, like
soft skills and emojis, how andwhen to use them.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
That's exactly what I was going to say, but you know,
when you and I are coming up,we learn things like how to take
notes as an active listener,like physical notes, pen to
paper and in class.
Look down at your paper, take anote, look up at your teacher,
like here's how you can showsomeone you're engaged.
You know how to make eyecontact, how to have a firm
handshake, like these are thingsthat we learn if we're digital.
(42:06):
I mean, I I didn't meet halfthe team that I work with in my
nine to five job until year twoon the job, so I don't need to
shake their hands until I'vebeen there for a little while
and they know me.
So I think learning how toapply those.
How do you write an email tosomeone you've never met but you
have to communicate with oftento show that you are
(42:30):
appreciative, that you are awareof their workload?
Like, just like you know, noone's writing memos anymore, but
we are writing emails to peoplewe've never met.
So how do we communicateemotionally, intelligently,
digitally?
I think that's a huge gap.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
Well, and I think that's the thing too right, so
your soft skills should be goodenough.
If you've worked with someonefor a full year, that first
interaction, if your soft skillsare right, should be a hug to
someone you've never met inperson before, because they feel
that comfort with you becauseyour soft skills digitally were
(43:07):
good enough.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
But also talking about a diverse workforce, right
, I mean.
The benefit of remote work isyou might have people on your
team that aren't even in thesame country as you.
How do you communicate withsomeone who has completely
different cultural norms?
Speaker 1 (43:25):
than you do?
Speaker 2 (43:26):
I learned this lesson the hard way many times.
You're going to communicate ina certain way, based on where
you're from and, if you can.
If we're teaching kids earlyhow to communicate across
cultural barriers because weknow, the odds are good that
when they get into the workforcethey're going to be on a global
(43:48):
team, how better off are theygoing to be?
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Absolutely.
So that's going to get me intoas we talk about innovating.
So I'm going to talk quicklyabout our trades and our trades
people and how we can innovate.
The you got more, go ahead, goahead.
I have two more, Don't be shy,go ahead.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
I have two more and then I will stop talking.
I think another reallyimportant thing we could do is
introduce adaptive scheduling.
I don't think that, becausewe're not training kids to go
into factories that we don'tneed, we don't need to have such
a rigorous schedule, and Ithink allowing kids to learn
their own pace and interestlevels would be really
(44:36):
beneficial.
This is being done in certainschools.
I went to a high school thatwas.
That was pace driven.
Like you, you work at your own,your own speed, you set your
own goals.
I don't think it was perfect.
I don't think it was even closeto perfect, but I think that
that's the right idea.
It's the right approach.
You know, some kids learn,everyone learns differently and
(44:59):
everyone learns at their ownpace.
And to shove kids into anenvironment and say you have to
be on this track and at thisspeed, you can't be too fast and
you can't be too slow, it's it.
It does them a disservicebecause now you're focusing on
what's wrong with them whenthere's there's nothing in most
cases there's nothing wrong withthem and so giving them the
space and the freedom to slowdown where they need to or speed
(45:24):
up where they're able, I thinkis is missing, and then the last
one, and then we can move onfrom this.
I'm just, I just think this iswe could talk all day, I feel
like, is critical thinking andproblem solving.
I think you touched upon thisone with the school innovation
school but just a curriculumthat prioritizes outside the box
(45:45):
thinking instead of just likelearn this, memorize this, take
a test and rewards risk takingand celebrates failure, Like
things that you're going to haveto do as a knowledge worker If
you're going to be successful.
You can't jump into a knowledgebased job and be afraid to take
risks, afraid to reinvent thewheel, to propose something new.
(46:08):
And how are we, how do weexpect people to do that when
they're not trained to takethose risks early, to say, hey,
teacher, I see what we're doing,I have an idea, Can we try it
this way?
And not being told to sit downand be quiet.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Yeah, and, and, well, and, to that point, and to that
point, the only jobs that AI isgoing to delete completely are
jobs that are purely regurgitory.
So we have to get rid of thatregurgitory education, because
AI can do that.
Ai can tell me to list thepresidents, all 50 in order.
(46:43):
Right, I don't need thatinformation, and my ability to
memorize knowledge and spit itback at you does nothing that ai
can't do.
So I'm not learning how to doanything, I'm just learning how
to repeat information, retaininformation.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
it is much more valuable for me to explain to
you the why, and I think well,instead of memorizing the
presidents and the order thatthey came, maybe talking about
about more of the foundations ofour country, and you know, like
understanding understanding ourconstitution and what it
actually is saying and what thatmeans for us today, like
(47:17):
picking apart those things andhaving discussions and debates
about that.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
Learning from our history and about it.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Right.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
So, tradespeople, I promised I wouldn't forget you.
I haven't.
So that's the next step to this, and this is going to kind of
lead into john's roast of theweek so john's roast of the week
.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Sorry, I know you like to do the jingle.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
I just I mean listen, if you want to sing, I won't
stop you.
So John's roast of the week isgoing to focus on the biggest
buzzword in education right nowLoan forgiveness.
The federal government saying,well, college is too expensive,
so we need to forgive loans sopeople can can survive, right,
(48:05):
and we don't want to talk aboutinflation, we don't want to talk
about colleges being tooexpensive, we don't want to talk
about all those other thingsthat are factoring into why the
loans are so big.
We want to talk about the factthat we're getting the loans in
the day in first place.
If you have somebody whoprioritizes themselves in trade,
so let's say, in our new worldof education, we have
(48:26):
trade-specific high schools,right, so you can graduate high
school with your GC license.
Use that malleable brain and GClicenses.
What they need is hours andapprenticeships.
So does carpentry, so doeswelding.
So a lot of trades need anapprenticeship to get your
(48:47):
certification before the test.
So if we're accuratelypreparing people for these
things, let's say, in today'sindustry, somebody graduates
high school and they want tostart a business, they want to
open an HVAC company.
They are a high schooler, theyare not qualified to take out a
business loan.
They're not qualified to takeout a mortgage.
(49:07):
They are not qualified to takeout a business loan.
They are not qualified to takeout a mortgage.
They are not qualified to takeout a personal loan to buy the
materials that they need.
They're beholden to theirparents because the system is
designed for factory workers,not entrepreneurs.
So what if in this system wehad high schools that when
people decided I want to be atradesman, I want to do the
(49:28):
dirty jobs right?
We help them get theircertifications, we help them get
their apprenticeships, weprepare them for a world with
those opportunities.
It gives them an opportunity toget a loan in that regard.
And if they can get a loan inthat regard, they're not getting
a student loan.
(49:49):
But what our world tells us isokay, you can't get a business
loan, you can't get a mortgage,you can't get a personal loan,
but I will lend you $178,000 tostudy communications right To
study.
You know pottery and when Igraduate I can go get a job in
(50:11):
communications or pottery.
But if I was studying potteryin the first place, it would
have been far more valuable forme to take a small business loan
, open a small pottery shop andbegin making pottery.
I can learn those disciplinesin a pottery studio.
I can't learn those disciplinesand successfully have my
pottery studio with $178,000 toa college.
(50:35):
I owe them 40 years of mypottery studio's income, unless,
for some reason, I becomewildly famous, right, but at
that point you might as well gooff and become an influencer,
right?
You got about the same chances.
John's roast of the week is theentire idea, now that the
federal government's trying tobuy your vote by forgiving your
student loans.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
Just drop that right there.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
No, forget that part, right?
I mean, the government's beenbuying votes since day one.
Heck, in the early 1800s youwouldn't get elected if you
didn't provide free whiskey.
So we're talking about buyingvotes is part of the system,
right?
That's broken, too sure,whatever, but forget about that
part of it.
We are saying we're patchworksolutions right, it's the same
(51:18):
thing with the Department ofEducation.
Oh, high-stakes testing is theproblem.
It's not allowing people oflower stature to get
opportunities at these bigschools.
Well, let's mandate rules togive those people opportunities
at bigger schools, instead ofsaying how can we prove these
kids actually can learn thisinformation?
(51:40):
Have this information right.
Sit down in an SAT and takeyour seven-hour test.
If you don't smash thatseven-hour test, sorry, you're
not getting to school, right?
That's how it was when I wasgrowing up and now it's.
I mean, depending on where youcome from and all these other
factors, you may not need tosmash it at all.
But now the kid who grew upunder the impression that he had
(52:03):
to smash this test isn'tgetting into that same school
and he is very, very wellqualified, or she is very well
qualified.
And so we're creating animbalance to try and solve a
structure problem.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Yeah, and when we were growing up, colleges just
to branch off what you just saidcolleges were looking for elite
colleges.
I mean, we're looking forstudents who were diversified,
right, diversified, diversified,diversified.
We want to see that you're aneight student, we want to see
that you're on this committee,we want to see that you
volunteer at your church, you'rean Eagle Scout and you also
(52:39):
like to volunteer at the YMCA orwhatever.
Like we want to see that youare stellar across the board.
That was the formula.
That's how I grew up.
That's why it was like makesure she's in sports, make sure
she takes a language, yada, yada, yada.
And then there was a shiftbecause everyone was stellar
across the board.
Now, like today, elite collegeswant someone who is deep right,
(53:02):
like, oh, this person wants tobe a nurse and everything she's
done up until this momentladders up to that.
Like she's done nineinternships, she's only 16 or 17
.
She's done nine internships athospitals.
She's, you know, done all theseAP courses.
She's done, you know, communitycollege, pre-med.
(53:23):
Everything is like it's this orbust and those are the kids
that they want.
Speaker 1 (53:28):
So it's like those poor kids who are in the
transition, who are like I'mdiversified, and then the
schools are like yeah, so iseveryone else, and the problem
that you run into, especiallywith that person, right, is she
just took out 170 000 in loansto become a nurse because since
she was six she's been planningon being a nurse and developed
this depth of bench, and nowshe's a.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
CPA.
She didn't do sports.
She loved tennis.
Didn't do tennis because itwouldn't help her in her nursing
career.
Like that was the.
That's the level now that theyhave to go to.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Yeah, and now she's a CPA because she realized after
being in the real nursing worldshe doesn't want to be a nurse.
Right, and this businesses willdevelop opportunities for
themselves where the money isRight.
So ever since we went to thefiat system, we got away from
gold.
Money's not real, so it's amatter of trying to figure out
how to grab that money.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
And so we will do a episode on innovating finance
and I will say nothing becauseit's way out of my depth.
And I will say nothing becauseit's way out of my depth.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
So you've got this world in which, because students
can sign their lives awayfinancially for the prospect of
an education, but they can't doso for the prospect of a
business or anything else,you've got diploma bills, these
schools that only basicallytrade you money for education.
(54:49):
And again, talking about thestructure, the federal
government doesn't ban them,doesn't even make a list of
these diploma mills.
They've got lists of everyaccredited university.
They do not have a list ofnon-accredited, clearly, diploma
mills, right?
So there isn't a list for thoseplaces because it's an industry
(55:10):
there's.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
But also if, if, if, a bachelor's degree is really
just about a piece of paper anda lot of in, a lot of, in most
cases, it's true, I mean unlessyou're very specialized or
continuing on.
Let's be real most, most ofwhat I learned I learned on the
(55:31):
job.
Yep.
Then there's no problem with adiploma mill.
Now, if you reform theeducation so that way, you
actually get knowledge andyou're taking that with you and
it's clear that you studied.
Speaker 1 (55:44):
It's not about the diploma mill.
It's about the fact that I cantake that loan Right At 18,.
Speaker 2 (55:49):
I can take out $50,000 a year Because it's a
degree from.
Yeah, it's in business.
Speaker 1 (55:55):
But with that same $50,000 a year, at that same
interest rate, if I started aplumbing company, I'd have that
$50,000 paid off by the end ofthe first year, easily Producing
revenue, exactly.
So we're not prioritizingproducing revenue.
We're not prioritizing learningthings that will actually
benefit us in the future.
We're prioritizing the machine.
(56:17):
Go to school, get good grades,get a good job Right.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
We're prioritizing that and that promise isn't
being delivered like it used to.
Speaker 1 (56:28):
No, of course it's not, because we're at a 35%
decline in factories, the jobswe're making these people for no
longer exist, so the return oninvestment is not there.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
You're growing a factory worker up until 12th
grade and then you're pushingthem into a knowledge worker
university.
It doesn't make any sense.
I mean that's an extremereductionist way to look at it.
But essentially the secondaryed is structured for factory
workers with a little bit ofvocational stuff thrown in over
the years.
And then you go to college andit's like we don't care what you
(57:01):
do with your time, but takethese soft skill, philosophical,
you know, higher level classesto prepare you to be a business
leader.
Speaker 1 (57:09):
It's like it's kind of a head spin all right,
education department fix it andon that I hope to hear back from
all of our educators come at usdon't be mad at us.
Speaker 2 (57:22):
We do.
We very much appreciate all youdo.
Speaker 1 (57:26):
But thank you so much for joining us.
We always appreciate your time.
Have a wonderful week.
Welcome back to the Innovate Everything podcast.
I'm your host, john Mode, and Iam joined, as always, by my
co-host, katie Mode, and todaywe're going to talk about
education.
I don't think it's any mystery.
I don't think anybody disagreesor denies that our education
(00:22):
system here in the US is broken.
In Florida, we have recentlylast year or two the government
of Florida started givingcredits to families who want to
send their kids to privateschools, because there was a
statewide acknowledgement thateveryone doesn't want to go to
public school.
Right, and you can say what youwant about the wokeness and the
(00:46):
anti-wokeness or all thesedifferent things, and while
banning books will bringthousands and thousands of
people out to talk abouteducation for the first time in
a decade, right, the realproblem is the system and these
things like the books, thesethings like COVID policies, are
(01:11):
the giant zit on the face of thesystem.
It brings your attention.
It's hard not to see it.
Right, like that Austin Powers,you know guacamole thing.
Right, we see it.
Oh, my goodness, I can't helpnot see it.
But the real problem is thesystem itself.
(01:32):
And if you look at pictures Idare you go Google pictures of
school cafeteria versus a prisoncafeteria, a school playground
versus a prison yard forexercise classroom environment
next to a school classroomenvironment.
There's a reason they're sosimilar and we'll get into that
(01:52):
in just a minute.
As a whole our school system,student behavior is atrocious.
Right, we'll get into innovateparenting at some point, but
parents are a big part of that.
The detachment of parents hasput this burden on the school
system of raise my kids.
Teachers because they're kindof being asked to be parents are
(02:13):
tired of being blamed foreverything.
All of society's problems fallon the teachers.
Administrators focus more onmicromanagement than they do on
helping the teachers do theirjob as well.
Their administrators arewalking around classroom to
classroom to make sureeveryone's got the right posters
on the wall.
They're not saying teacher, doyou need help?
They're not saying teacher, howcan I help you educate your
(02:37):
class better?
They're not saying hey, teacher, where are the parents failing?
How can I push the parents tobe better?
Overall system is built off ofhigh stakes, testing, uniformity
, conformity, and that's justnot how the world works.
And you see things like theOlympics break dancer from
(03:03):
Australia.
I'm sure you've seen the memesonline there was, have you?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
So she's dressed in green, she's an Australian and
she does the worst breakdanceroutine you've ever seen.
No, I haven't seen it, actually.
I will show you.
Overall, there's this moment inthe Olympics where an
Australian breakdancer shows upon stage and the way they ran
breakdancing in the Olympics wascompetition style.
(03:31):
Someone did a routine and theother person responded to the
routine Like a dance battle yeah, like a dance battle and they
evaluated it on points.
The Australian breakdancer wasawarded zero points.
Everyone all over the internetis making fun of this person
because it was so bad.
It looked like me going out fora breakdancing fight not having
(03:54):
any idea what breakdancingshould look like.
Right Like I can't do the spinon my head or the rotations or
whatever, so I would end updoing weird things on the floor.
That's what that person did andyou ask yourself how does that
happen?
How do we get to this pointwhere this Australian
breakdancer is an Olympian.
How is she in the room withthese people?
Does Australia not have anyonebetter?
(04:15):
And as you?
look they do.
There's a lot of goodbreakdancers.
So how it happened is theOlympic Committee assigned the
WDMA or the World DancingAdministration, who is, I guess,
the foremost authority indancing but their number one
(04:35):
thing is ballroom dancing.
That's what they do.
Ballroom dancing gets snubbedfrom the Olympics that doesn't
make any sense and effectivelyreplaced with breakdancing for
this Olympics.
So the ballroom dancing peopleare like we don't make any sense
and effectively replaced withbreak dancing for this olympics.
So the ballroom dancing peoplelike we don't know any break
dancers, so they assignedregional break dancing
(04:56):
authorities to give me yourcompetitors.
Where in australia, we went alittle bit off the rails, right,
and so we're going to get towhat I'm talking about.
Just a second about schools.
Is they?
They reached out to theaustralian breakdancing league
or whatever.
Whatever it was called.
That doesn't, the name doesn'tmatter.
That league was run by thewoman and her, or was founded by
(05:16):
the woman and her husband, thewoman being our olympic
competitor, her husband beingthe coach for the Olympics.
And what happened?
Speaker 2 (05:27):
and how it was inside job.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
And that's what everyone's getting up in arms
about.
Oh, it's an inside job.
It's an inside job, but whatreally happened was she founded
this organization, so she waslike, hey, I'll throw the
competition.
And she threw a competition andit just happened to she was
above and above board, and allthat.
She threw the competition in avery difficult.
It just happened to she wasabove, above board and all that.
She threw the competition in avery difficult place to get to,
(05:49):
with a relatively reasonableentropy, lots of, with
relatively short notice, and thebig competitors couldn't make
it.
And so she won quote-unquote,fair and square, and therefore
became the person she bought shebought her way, yeah and then
and then the that that committee.
Now people will point out thatthis committee is no longer run
(06:11):
by her and her husband.
They're not even board members,but I bet you they do know them
.
They founded the committee.
I bet you they're friends,right?
And this lady ray gun is hername is now now competing for
Australia, makes an absolutejoke of herself, becomes a meme.
The reason I highlight thatparticular instance well, while,
(06:32):
yes, it's relevant, right, it'scurrently internet trending.
It also is there to point outthat when you look at the school
system today, a vast majorityof your school board members are
55 plus.
Their kids have long grown up.
(06:52):
They're not in touch withcurrent society of the children.
It's a low paid position withlong hours and lots of meetings,
so it tends to favor people whoare retired.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
It's an stagnation.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, and so you talk about someone who's running our
schools.
Now, there is value in wisdom,trust me, there's value in
wisdom.
But anybody who's in their 30swith young children and their
parents are watching their kidsfor the first time when their
kids are first born, you quicklyrealize how much of that you
forget just by not doing it.
(07:25):
Because your grandparents walkin the room or their
grandparents walk in the roomand they start to help with your
children and they go.
Oh, why is she crying?
And every parent at 30 goes tohungry crying.
It's obvious.
You can hear it right, becausewe're in that world.
Our parents are 30 yearsremoved from that world.
They've forgotten what a hungrycry sounds like.
(07:46):
Same as us when we were in highschool.
That's just all crying, right.
So they've kind of they'redetached from that.
It's been 15, 20 years sincetheir children were in education
.
So they're Secondary education,secondary education.
So they're detached, naturally.
And these are the ones who aresetting up the administration.
(08:07):
They're also retired lots andlots of time, right?
They also have a fair amount ofmoney.
They don't need the job, right.
So these school board members,they're elected officials and at
the end of each year, nearly70% of them are running for
re-election every year.
So it's the same people over andover and over again.
(08:27):
Now I know for me, when I losecontrol of something or I'm a
little bit detached fromsomething, the most accurate
representation I can get of howsuccessful that thing is is
reports and compliance.
So it's not these people'sfault necessarily that they're
(08:49):
detached, but they're focusingon reports and compliance.
So testing, and are theteachers doing exactly what we
say they're supposed to do?
There also tend to be wealthierretired people who wanted to be
in politics.
So, as our country has shownand we'll get to an innovate
politics episode one day older,wealthier people who are
(09:10):
interested in politics tend tohave agendas, which is one of
the reasons we say anyone who'sinterested in running as an
official is going to have anagenda.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Yeah, of course you wouldn't run if you didn't have
an agenda exactly well, and so Imean agenda, agenda in the
benign sense.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yeah, you're going to have alternate things that you
are looking for you want toaccomplish something.
Exactly, and so the fact that wehave these school board members
that are older, more detachedfrom the process, tend to follow
kind of the same trajectory inlife.
Where they are.
There are school boards thathave 40-something-old, 30 and
40-year-old board members thatare running it, that have kids
(09:48):
in school, but those tend to bethe school boards.
From my basic research.
I'm not in the educationalworld, but those tend to be the
people who are a little bit moredialed in and demanding changes
.
First and foremost, why is ourschool system that way, the way
it?
Speaker 2 (10:05):
is Thank you for setting the stage for us.
I think that we're due for aneducational reform, and I say
that because we're due for one,but I also think that this
should be something that happenson a revolving basis.
Our education system shouldconstantly be reforming as the
(10:26):
workforce needs shift, and thereason I say that is because the
public school system the way weknow it today has not changed
much since its birth in the late19th century.
And what was happening in thelate 19th, early 20th centuries
(10:51):
Industrial, Revolution.
Industrial Revolution.
So, I mean, I think a lot ofpeople are aware that there's
connection between theIndustrial Revolution and modern
education.
But for our listeners who maynot be well-versed, the United
States experienced a significantshift towards industrialization
.
During this time, and in orderto align with demands for a
(11:19):
rapidly growing need for factoryworkers and an evolving economy
, the public school system wasliterally born Before that.
Education accessibility wasvery limited, very irregular.
It was unaffordable for most ofthe population because most of
the population was agrarianessentially.
(11:42):
So it was really just reservedfor wealthy families to send
their kids to get a formaleducation.
And then the industrialrevolution really flipped that
on its head and now it's like,okay, we've got all these
factories, all thismanufacturing happening and we
have no one, we have noworkforce.
So let's set up a public,accessible system that churns
(12:05):
out workers.
And so our system was born.
And what's really interestingis, you know, when this system
emerged, the organizationalstructure of the school system
was built to mirror thestructure of the factory workday
.
Right, because the need wasworkforce.
(12:28):
So everything was designed to,to turn to, to, to prime these
kids into successful factoryworkers right down to the bell
ringing to let you know theshift ended.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, it's just changing the ring of a bell
that's a good example.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
And and and it goes deeper than that, right, I mean
it's you're talking about theregimen.
You know it's regimented, withspecific schedules, designated
periods for different activities.
This instills, you know,discipline, punctuality.
I mean the reason why our kidshave to be at school by a
certain time, not a minute late.
(13:05):
And what does that teach them?
It teaches them to respect thepunch card.
You've got to punch in, youbetter be there on time.
Same thing at the schoolthere's no grace for tardiness.
It also the segmentation ofthose time slots for various
subjects.
It parallels the division oflabor in factories as well.
(13:29):
So essentially, this highstructured routine primed
students to be the futureworkforce in manufacturing
plants and other highlystructured and regimented
factories.
And this system is still inplace today.
Our kids still have to be thereat a very specific time.
They switch on a veryregimented schedule.
(13:49):
They're expected to have thesehighly disciplined and
discipline's great.
I mean we're not saying thatthese are inherently bad traits,
it's just.
I think it's important torealize that this system that
we've all gone through, our kidsare now, if you have, kids are
going through, even if they'rein private school.
The private schools stillmirror the same organizational
(14:11):
structure.
There might be some deviationshere and there, but overall
there's a very definitive starttime, there's a very definitive
end time.
Everything is blocked.
There's a lunch block, all yoursubjects are blocked into very
specific times.
It's very structured and I justthink it's interesting that
nothing has changed since theindustrialization.
(14:33):
But we're not working the sameway anymore.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
You can't necessarily blame the, the people who are
running the show right, the, the, the clowns are running the
circus.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
We're not calling anyone in academia a clown.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
No, I'm just saying that the people who are raised
in this industrialized systemright that to them, right.
So you are a byproduct of yourexperiences.
You found that the blockschedule really helped you with
time management.
As you look back to the piecesof education that defined who
(15:08):
you are and what made yousuccessful, you're looking back
at the factory and saying, lookhow the factory helped me, and
so you want to implement thethings in the factory that
helped you.
So when I say the clowns arerunning the circus, I mean they
don't know anything but thecircus, they don't know anything
but this system, and the peoplewho think differently from the
(15:29):
system are naturally not goingto be as prioritized and as
heard.
I don't know about you, but myfriend group, a vast majority of
my friends who really enjoyedthe educational system, became
teachers.
A lot of those same people leftcollege and then got an
internship with the college andthen went into early education.
They like that.
(15:50):
That system works for them,they enjoy it, they appreciate
it, they see the value in it.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And there's nothing wrong with the structure.
It's just we have to realizethat the skills that kids were
coming out of school with in theearly 20th century were more
applicable to the work they weregoing into than maybe they.
It's not applicable the sameway today.
Yes, punctuality, you know.
(16:19):
Being regimented being, youknow.
Knowing how to operate on aschedule, having healthy habits.
They're good, but what are wemissing by hyper-focusing on
that type of regimentedstructure?
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah, and you're also talking about the factory.
The factory even since, like1979, there's a 35% decrease in
factories in the United States.
So the model that's buildingfactory workers are going out
into the workforce with nofactory jobs.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Exactly, exactly, and you know.
Okay, for those of you sittingat home saying, okay, okay, fine
, you can argue about thestructure and the organization
of public education, but whatabout the curriculum?
The curriculums are alwaysevolving, like.
Kids are getting a wider rangeof education now than they were
back in the late 19th century,early 20th century.
(17:13):
Sure, however, we have torealize that even the curriculum
, the core, the common core ofof secondary education reading,
writing and arithmetic werechosen because they would make a
competent factory worker.
(17:34):
So, yes, it's been, we'veexpanded.
The curriculums probably aremuch more comprehensive now.
Comprehensive now, and you knowwe have, you have to deep dive
into a ton of differentcurriculums at private versus
public, versus charter, versusMontessori, which we'll get into
some of that.
But I think we still need toacknowledge that public schools
(17:57):
were built, were born from theground up with the intention of
filling factories and, to yourpoint, there are no factories to
fill.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Yeah, and even so, let's zoom out right.
So, all right, we hear youInnovate Everything podcast.
What do you have to say aboutinnovating education?
Well, I'm so.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
I have so much to say .
Speaker 1 (18:22):
So glad you asked.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
We're not qualified, but we have opinions.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
We are opinionated and we could talk all day about
the qualifications we don't have, but what we are going to do is
focus on things that peoplehave done with qualifications
that they do have.
And when you look at, if youjust Google, just spend a moment
on Google and type ininnovative education, innovating
(18:46):
education, innovative schools,I have to say no one's Googling
anymore, they're ChatGPT.
Okay, ask ChatGPT what you'regoing to get ironically, chatgpt
is going to plug itself itselfis that most of today's
innovative education is notgenerally a change of the system
, not a change of the structureof the education.
(19:08):
It's incorporating ai, chat,gbt is like hey, I'm, I'm
marketable I can make yousmarter.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
I can make you so smart.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
So it's a focus on integrating ai and increasing
computer learning.
But your increase in computerlearning, your increase in AI,
is really just a digitizedversion of other classes that
were in the system.
So while AI can help you makemore efficient education and
computers will help you be morerelevant to today's society, the
(19:39):
structure of the education isstill off.
They're teaching you what tothink, not how to think.
And in today's modern world,where we are in this particular
world, you look at theconspiracy theorists for right,
you hear it all the time, right,and what they're saying is
we're sheep were.
(20:02):
Right, you hear it all the time, right, and what they're saying
is we're sheep.
And I, no wonder we're sheep.
We were.
We were raised in a factorysystem to be factory workers,
taught to be sheep.
We were taught to be sheep.
So no one can blame you thatyou're sheep.
But everyone's saying wake up,wake up.
And the only and again, the onlytime that we're dialing into
what's wrong with education iswhen they put books we don't
(20:22):
like on the shelves, or putbooks that we think should be on
the shelves or taken off theshelves.
Or, you know, we want the kidsto go to school.
They shouldn't wear masks.
All the things that wedetermine as a society are
crossing a line.
That's when we stand up.
Crossing a line.
(20:44):
That's when we stand up, but wedon't look at the structure,
because what you see onuniversity campuses forever,
since the dawn of the university, are protests and people who
are thinking and telling you howthey feel.
One side or the other doesn'tmatter right?
You've got students in thefraternity house.
I don't remember exactly wherethey were, but there was a
protest, anti-israeli protest,about Palestine.
(21:05):
That's their opinion.
They're expressing theiropinion.
Are they sheep?
Probably, but there's apro-Palestine protest.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
When those kids were approached and asked what do you
hear protesting, they said oh,we're protesting against Israel.
Okay, what about?
What's your position?
Oh, I don't know.
We were just told to come here.
A lot of them just didn't know,beyond the headline, what they
wanted to achieve, what theywanted to happen as a result of
their protesting.
They were just like oh, we werejust told to show up.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah.
And then you have somefraternity brothers, where these
pro-Palestinian protesters areapproaching an American flag and
they're going to pull down theAmerican flag and put up the
flag of Palestine, and you getthis small group of young men
who look at that situation andgo.
You know what?
Something feels wrong aboutthis?
I personally disagree with this.
(21:57):
I'm going to think for myselfand make a decision, right.
I personally disagree with this.
I'm going to think for myselfand make a decision right.
So, instead of going with thecrowd or saying, hey, not my
problem, they did not allow theAmerican flag to be taken down
and they've been paraded allover.
I mean, they were at one ofTrump's speeches, I mean they've
been paraded everywhere.
But that moment and that's whereyou see, in my opinion, true
(22:21):
revolution in a process is whensomebody stands up and says I
don't think this makes any sense, we shouldn't do this.
And and stops the.
The stops the factory line,right.
So we're going to stop thefactory line right, and this
isn't a political one side orthe other thing, it's a matter
of stopping the factory line.
(22:41):
How are we looking at thisfactory line and saying where
should it go?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Totally Sorry, I was lost in your story.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Lost in the sultry tones of my voice.
So how do we fix it?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah, let's, let's daydream a little bit.
Today, in the year of our Lord,2024, knowledge workers make up
the dominant workforce, and Ilooked this up.
So think fields such as tech,healthcare, finance, education,
(23:16):
media, research, et cetera, etcetera.
This is the dominant workforcetoday.
Right, it's not manufacturing,it's not factory work, it's
knowledge workers.
And for listeners who don'tunderstand what that term means,
it means anyone who works notin a trade, essentially.
(23:36):
So you could be in tech, youcan be in healthcare, you can be
in finance, you could be acomms person, you can be a COO.
It's someone who is probably onthe computer a lot and has to
wear a lot of different hatswithin their role.
That's essentially a knowledgeworker, don't worry tradespeople
will get to you in just aminute.
Yes, tradespeople are stillvital to the health and success
(24:00):
of our economy.
And have the right to beeducated and have the right to
be educated, but we want to lookat this from the perspective of
we're educating kids for thegreatest need, right?
Because that's where educationwas born from a need, a need for
factory workers.
So let's pretend that we'rebuilding the public education
system today, in this climate.
(24:21):
And if we were to do that, howdo we prime the next generation
to be tech literate, creative,multifunctional problem solvers?
What would that school systemlook like?
I have some ideas, but I'll letyou start, so I'm not taking
all the air out of the room.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Yeah, so well, first things first.
I think if we're building aeducation system of today, the
first and foremost and to me themost important piece is taking
into account the climate of theyoung population now, which is
work-life balance, so a schoollife balance.
(24:58):
One of the biggest frustrationsthat I had coming out from the
military and then out of collegewas the lack of structure, true
structure, in everyday workingenvironments.
Nothing about college preparesyou.
It prepares you for the day tostart at this time and end at
this time and then, like you,just kind of have to get some
work done between times when theclass is there, right, so your
(25:22):
assignments nothing reallyprepares you for working at all
hours, for you know learning howto balance not being in school
with your day-to-day life.
So, first and foremost, I thinkthat, while there has to be a
consistent structure, we show upevery day because these
teachers need to know and toshow up.
I don't think we should have afully remote school, because I
(25:43):
think socialization isincredibly important.
But so for me, this would be myfirst two things A more
flexible learning style as faras how the structure of the day
is run, decision-making amongstthe individuals who are learning
, being able to choose and picktheir curriculum, while keeping
(26:05):
the base similar to college,looking at those classes and
saying I think this is valuable.
And then the third piece isthat social element of this, of
the marketplace, right.
So making sure that we'rehaving discussions and we're
using our minds, because to me,on my personal side of this, I
think that the more we focusschool on developing people who
(26:30):
think for themselves, the lessof the rhetoric, the less of the
overarching messaging willaffect individuals, and I think
that if you do that, you'll havea lot more entrepreneurs,
you'll have a lot more kind ofone and two person businesses,
which I think will diversifycompetitiveness, will have
(26:53):
people working harder andworking better.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
I totally agree.
Flexible work was the first oneon my list too, got it.
Yeah, I nailed it and so werethe other ones.
I had them both on my list, allthree on my list.
But I think what is interestingyou brought up, college doesn't
prepare you for the rigorouswork that you're going to do
(27:17):
once you're employed do onceyou're employed.
But I think that was true 10years ago.
But I think today, with a lotof companies trying to help
their employees achieve greaterwork-life balance and the
workforce being more tuned towork-life balance, I kind of
envy anyone who's coming out ofcollege now or in the next
(27:37):
couple of years, because I feellike college really does prepare
you for work-life balance.
And think about it.
You create your own schedulefor the most part.
I mean, classes are offered oncertain days, but you build your
schedule.
You show up to a 60 to90-minute class and then in
between the time is yours.
You can either go back to yourdorm right away and study, or
(27:58):
you can wait and you can do itin the middle of the night or
over the weekend, or all at theback end of the semester, like
no one is breathing down yourneck.
It's like here's the materialdo what you got to do, you'll be
graded, end of story.
And I remember feeling verydiscombobulated coming out of my
collegiate experience andjumping into my career, because
(28:18):
I went from having so muchfreedom over my time and being
able to.
I was the owner of my time andthat that school life balance or
education, social life balancewas mine.
And then you go into work andit's like all of a sudden you're
stuck at a desk from nine tofive.
It was.
It was very, very unsettlingfor me and I think that with a
(28:41):
shift to hybrid work, remotework, higher emphasis on that
work-life balance coming out ofcollege now, if you're
graduating right now and you gowork for a company that has it
as a high priority and they'regiving you the flexibility to
work from wherever, whenever,you're going to transition so
(29:03):
much easier because you'realready doing that as a college
student, and so I think thatthat's just a really important
call I wanted to just to make.
But I think, yeah, I thinkcollaborative, flexible spaces
that promote project-basedlearning essentially.
So like think labs, I think weneed more lab-type environments
in schools.
(29:23):
Like we get to go and tinker inthe lab for science, but why
can't we also do that across allthe other studies, right?
Like see how the work is usedin an application, and be more
hands-on and get those veryspecific work environments
created for the kids.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
And I actually have a really good example of someone
who's doing that.
So there's a school calledOpportunity Central, and they
are founded by a company calledForney ISD and what they are is
a school that's built around theidea of entrepreneurship.
It's a high school and,effectively, what this building
is it's an old mall, and so thefirst floor of the entire
(30:05):
building is businesses, realbusinesses run by business
owners that are given a reducedrent so that they can run their
businesses out of the school'sfacilities and in exchange for
that reduced rent, they internhigh school students.
So the high school students godownstairs at certain points of
the day and learn how to run abusiness, learn how the
(30:28):
challenges that are with it,like they're.
They're.
They're technically probablyyou know, they're free labor, Um
, but they are learning how thisbusiness owner, what the
challenges I'm going through,are how I'm scaling all these
things, and from what I wasreading, it sounds like they
intentionally cycle thesebusinesses through with newer
kind of refresh them with newerbusinesses from time to time as
(30:49):
the businesses grow, Becausewhat you don't want, you don't
want a high schooler walkinginto a well-oiled machine and
being like, oh okay, if I own abusiness, I just set up these
things and it works right.
And I think that that's one ofthe biggest hurdles with
education even going to businessschool and college, that no one
(31:13):
prepares or isn't well prepared.
It's here are all the theoriesand the things that help you run
a business, but when you go andrun a real business, your time
is very, very different.
There's very little in theschool system you know, even in
college, that really preparesyou to be an entrepreneur.
That's why they say you getyour, you get your MBA in two
years by owning a business,because you just run a business
for two years.
And now I understand everythingthat they teach me in an MBA
(31:36):
because I, I saw it, I did itand I don't know if you can do
that in a classroom.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Yeah, yeah, and that's really cool.
That's cool.
I hadn't heard of it before andI think career prep and skill
training is a huge miss in ourschool system.
Again, we're not talking aboutspecific schools.
We know there's schools outthere that do this right, but
overall there needs to be justthe foundation.
(32:03):
I mean, our kids' school does agood job of this at the high
school level, right.
They introduce a vocationalprogram and I think by your
sophomore year you have to pick.
You have to pick something.
And the whole point is not toget you ahead so that way you
can get into the best schools.
I mean that does help, but it'smore to get the kids, kind of
(32:24):
you know, introduced to thesecareers.
What will they actually be likewhen they roll their sleeves up
and they get into the work?
And it helps them realize, like, do I really want to be a nurse
?
Do I really want to be a marinebiologist?
Whatever it is, they get themplugged in with companies.
They get them into is.
They get them plugged in withcompanies.
(32:44):
They get them into internships,they get them on the ground
floor and I think that that'shuge when you're talking about a
knowledge, worker, environment,economy, because it's a lot to
go through all this educationand then go into a university
and declare a major and thenrealize it's not what you
thought it was at all.
So having career prep not justlike, oh, here's like the
(33:07):
classes you should take if youwant to be an engineer, but like
here, go taste it, go out thereand see what it would be like
to be an engineer, because youmay not actually want to do that
.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
If, when I was in high school and even in college,
if I would have trulyunderstood what engineers do, I
would have gone oh you wouldhave been a great engineer
because I, up until up until Igot into the workforce and I
started meeting engineers, yeah,who did engineering things.
You know, product design and allon all those those individual
(33:39):
components, I thought allengineers did math for bridges.
I thought all architects drewpictures of houses and did math
too.
So I wasn't aware thatengineers are in product design.
Engineers are blowing things up, right, like you really don't.
Engineers are building movieprops, right.
There's engineers doing allkinds of really, really cool
(34:01):
things.
And I grew up, I was raised ina family with several engineers
and they were all computer guys,right, and so it was it's
electrical engineering, it'scomputer engineering, it's it's
very specific math, heavy work,and don't get me wrong, there's
math in all engineering.
But had I known that there were15 different kinds of engineer
(34:22):
and there were a bunch ofdifferent areas you can take
that and heck, you can be asalesman as an engineer, right,
I would 100 have got engineersright.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
You just didn't get the exposure and that's the
problem.
And there are.
There are industries that aredoing a better job of this.
Stem is a good example, like inmanufacturing, because you know
there is a huge drop inmanufacturing.
People don't want to go intomanufacturing because they think
dirty, grimy factory, which ishow it has been for a long time,
(34:54):
and so you know the STEM fieldis doing a better job of
infiltrating the school early.
The STEM field is doing abetter job of infiltrating the
(35:23):
school early, elementary leveland teaching kids what it means
to be in manufacturing andgetting give kids a really good
understanding early of what itwould mean to be XYZ.
I think it would.
It would help.
It would help produce awell-rounded students because
they've kind of looked around abit more and been exposed, but
it would produce a student whohas a better idea of where they
want to go.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah.
So I think I think if we're, ifwe're kind of overhaul of the
education system, I think thefirst and foremost, I think a
lot of things.
When you innovate them, youneed to start from the top down,
and so the first thing that Iwould say a massive change to
make is and this is a little bitof a foreshadowing to innovate
politics, but it is what it isis get the career type
(36:08):
administrators out of the system, put in people who are truly
doing these things.
There's nothing morehypocritical than the dean or in
all the professors in abusiness school, having never
run a business.
They're purely educationalpeople and and you see that in
some institutions where the dean, the, the person who's teaching
entrepreneurship at the, at abusiness school, have never even
(36:31):
started a business and it's andyou know so they're teaching me
theories off of theories thatthey learned themselves in the
same setting.
Right, and then you get ateacher who was an entrepreneur
and they laid out gritty.
One of the most valuable thingsthat ever happened to me in
education was I was our marinebiology major when I first got
(36:51):
into college and I walked in thedoor I think it was chemistry
100.
And the teacher asked.
The professor said who wants to, wants to be like what do you
want to be in here?
What does each person in theroom want to be?
And he went person by personand they said I want to.
I want to study the behavioralpatterns of sharks, right?
Speaker 2 (37:14):
they said okay, great , we were in chem 101.
They're probably all pre-pharmmajors well, I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
I think it was chemistry, but he was going
through um and there were somepharmacists in the room as well,
so, but he was the.
I want to study the, you know,behavior patterns of sharks.
Okay, great, you're going to dofour years of college, um, then
you're going to work in a labfor three years and then you're
going to go and do some kind ofspecialty education and then you
need your phd and he kind of hewalked you through the
trajectory of where, where yourcareer would have to go to get
(37:41):
there, which is a shame becauseyou're already started.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, I mean, thank God it was early, but it would
have been great to know that asa as a sophomore in high school.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Exactly and right.
And so he did the same thingwith um, with pharmacy majors
Right, you're going to do this,you're going to do this, you're
going to do this.
And he laid out the trajectory.
But every single science-basedclass was the only way to get
where you want is one of twoways Get funded, have someone
just throw money at you to dowhatever it is you want to do,
or go work in a lab for fouryears and study the drift
(38:13):
patterns of crab eggs.
The dream unlocked.
That's what's going to get youto that next step.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
That's what's going to get you to that.
Next specialize in something soobsolete that you are the only
person who has any knowledge ofthat area.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
And then it will and find a way that the drift
patterns of crab eggs interactwith sharks.
And then go hey, I'm an expertin this weird little thing.
And then, and then, plug onnational geographicographic?
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Or it's Discovery.
Now I think Discovery yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
But so there was such a value in that conversation,
taking those people right.
And Steve Jobs kind of famouslysaid the best managers are
people who didn't want to manage.
They're individual contributorswho feel they have to lead
because everyone's screwing itup right.
Yeah, to lead, becauseeveryone's screwing it up right.
(39:02):
And so take those people, findthose people, put them in the
administration, let them helpdictate what will benefit us
right.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
So I think that's step one, because they're not
interested in micromanagement,they just want the job to get
done.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Well, and they just want accuracy in the process.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
So another really big innovation that I think the
school system needs.
Oh, I have a couple, but Ithink this one's really
important.
I think that social emotionallearning is really important and
completely lacking, especiallywhen we talk about needing
emotionally intelligent leadersin industry.
(39:35):
Full stop, right.
We want to put a higheremphasis on soft skills so the
next generation can effectivelycommunicate with an
interconnected and diverseworkforce, and we're just not.
I mean, it's a shame that myfirst interpersonal
communication class was incollege.
(39:55):
Like why is this not beingintroduced at I don't know third
grade level?
Like how do we talk to eachother, how do we be empathetic?
How do we have boundaries?
Like these are all reallyimportant life skills that, yes,
you should be learning at home.
We're not absolving parents.
You know it's not the teacher'sresponsibility to create
well-rounded humans, but you'retalking about a place that these
(40:18):
kids are spending six, eighthours of their day, like there.
There are skills that we canstart, we can bake into the
curriculum that will teach thatemotional EQ, the emotional
intelligence that will servethem in the workforce later.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Yeah, and there's actually there's plenty of
studies that have proven thatschools that focus almost
exclusively on soft skillsversus schools that focus
exclusively on educationalspecifics, the soft skill
students had higher SAT scoresor more successful in life,
because soft skills are thatimportant.
And I think, in a world that'sgetting increasingly more and
(40:54):
more digital, soft skills arebecoming less and less needed
and therefore the people whohave them have a leg up.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
You mean, they're getting more and more needed.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Well, they're getting less needed because we don't
necessarily need soft skills tosit on the other end of the
computer and not be seen, but wedo need soft skills to interact
with human beings Always.
I think what we will see in thenear-ish future is a return to
in-person everything.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
But I think also in the technology age they're still
highly applicable.
These skills right, you canteach them differently.
For example, you know when wewere in school.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
I'm sorry.
I was just thinking of acollege 101 class called, like
soft skills and emojis, how andwhen to use them.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
That's exactly what I was going to say, but you know,
when you and I are coming up,we learn things like how to take
notes as an active listener,like physical notes, pen to
paper and in class.
Look down at your paper, take anote, look up at your teacher,
like here's how you can showsomeone you're engaged.
You know how to make eyecontact, how to have a firm
handshake, like these are thingsthat we learn if we're digital.
(42:06):
I mean, I I didn't meet halfthe team that I work with in my
nine to five job until year twoon the job, so I don't need to
shake their hands until I'vebeen there for a little while
and they know me.
So I think learning how toapply those.
How do you write an email tosomeone you've never met but you
have to communicate with oftento show that you are
(42:30):
appreciative, that you are awareof their workload?
Like, just like you know, noone's writing memos anymore, but
we are writing emails to peoplewe've never met.
So how do we communicateemotionally, intelligently,
digitally?
I think that's a huge gap.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
Well, and I think that's the thing too right, so
your soft skills should be goodenough.
If you've worked with someonefor a full year, that first
interaction, if your soft skillsare right, should be a hug to
someone you've never met inperson before, because they feel
that comfort with you becauseyour soft skills digitally were
(43:07):
good enough.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
But also talking about a diverse workforce, right
, I mean.
The benefit of remote work isyou might have people on your
team that aren't even in thesame country as you.
How do you communicate withsomeone who has completely
different cultural norms?
Speaker 1 (43:25):
than you do?
Speaker 2 (43:26):
I learned this lesson the hard way many times.
You're going to communicate ina certain way, based on where
you're from and, if you can.
If we're teaching kids earlyhow to communicate across
cultural barriers because weknow, the odds are good that
when they get into the workforcethey're going to be on a global
(43:48):
team, how better off are theygoing to be?
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Absolutely.
So that's going to get me intoas we talk about innovating.
So I'm going to talk quicklyabout our trades and our trades
people and how we can innovate.
The you got more, go ahead, goahead.
I have two more, Don't be shy,go ahead.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
I have two more and then I will stop talking.
I think another reallyimportant thing we could do is
introduce adaptive scheduling.
I don't think that, becausewe're not training kids to go
into factories that we don'tneed, we don't need to have such
a rigorous schedule, and Ithink allowing kids to learn
their own pace and interestlevels would be really
(44:36):
beneficial.
This is being done in certainschools.
I went to a high school thatwas.
That was pace driven.
Like you, you work at your own,your own speed, you set your
own goals.
I don't think it was perfect.
I don't think it was even closeto perfect, but I think that
that's the right idea.
It's the right approach.
You know, some kids learn,everyone learns differently and
(44:59):
everyone learns at their ownpace.
And to shove kids into anenvironment and say you have to
be on this track and at thisspeed, you can't be too fast and
you can't be too slow, it's it.
It does them a disservicebecause now you're focusing on
what's wrong with them whenthere's there's nothing in most
cases there's nothing wrong withthem and so giving them the
space and the freedom to slowdown where they need to or speed
(45:24):
up where they're able, I thinkis is missing, and then the last
one, and then we can move onfrom this.
I'm just, I just think this iswe could talk all day, I feel
like, is critical thinking andproblem solving.
I think you touched upon thisone with the school innovation
school but just a curriculumthat prioritizes outside the box
(45:45):
thinking instead of just likelearn this, memorize this, take
a test and rewards risk takingand celebrates failure, Like
things that you're going to haveto do as a knowledge worker If
you're going to be successful.
You can't jump into a knowledgebased job and be afraid to take
risks, afraid to reinvent thewheel, to propose something new.
(46:08):
And how are we, how do weexpect people to do that when
they're not trained to takethose risks early, to say, hey,
teacher, I see what we're doing,I have an idea, Can we try it
this way?
And not being told to sit downand be quiet.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Yeah, and, and, well, and, to that point, and to that
point, the only jobs that AI isgoing to delete completely are
jobs that are purely regurgitory.
So we have to get rid of thatregurgitory education, because
AI can do that.
Ai can tell me to list thepresidents, all 50 in order.
(46:43):
Right, I don't need thatinformation, and my ability to
memorize knowledge and spit itback at you does nothing that ai
can't do.
So I'm not learning how to doanything, I'm just learning how
to repeat information, retaininformation.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
it is much more valuable for me to explain to
you the why, and I think well,instead of memorizing the
presidents and the order thatthey came, maybe talking about
about more of the foundations ofour country, and you know, like
understanding understanding ourconstitution and what it
actually is saying and what thatmeans for us today, like
(47:17):
picking apart those things andhaving discussions and debates
about that.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
Learning from our history and about it.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Right.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
So, tradespeople, I promised I wouldn't forget you.
I haven't.
So that's the next step to this, and this is going to kind of
lead into john's roast of theweek so john's roast of the week
.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Sorry, I know you like to do the jingle.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
I just I mean listen, if you want to sing, I won't
stop you.
So John's roast of the week isgoing to focus on the biggest
buzzword in education right nowLoan forgiveness.
The federal government saying,well, college is too expensive,
so we need to forgive loans sopeople can can survive, right,
(48:05):
and we don't want to talk aboutinflation, we don't want to talk
about colleges being tooexpensive, we don't want to talk
about all those other thingsthat are factoring into why the
loans are so big.
We want to talk about the factthat we're getting the loans in
the day in first place.
If you have somebody whoprioritizes themselves in trade,
so let's say, in our new worldof education, we have
(48:26):
trade-specific high schools,right, so you can graduate high
school with your GC license.
Use that malleable brain and GClicenses.
What they need is hours andapprenticeships.
So does carpentry, so doeswelding.
So a lot of trades need anapprenticeship to get your
(48:47):
certification before the test.
So if we're accuratelypreparing people for these
things, let's say, in today'sindustry, somebody graduates
high school and they want tostart a business, they want to
open an HVAC company.
They are a high schooler, theyare not qualified to take out a
business loan.
They're not qualified to takeout a mortgage.
(49:07):
They are not qualified to takeout a business loan.
They are not qualified to takeout a mortgage.
They are not qualified to takeout a personal loan to buy the
materials that they need.
They're beholden to theirparents because the system is
designed for factory workers,not entrepreneurs.
So what if in this system wehad high schools that when
people decided I want to be atradesman, I want to do the
(49:28):
dirty jobs right?
We help them get theircertifications, we help them get
their apprenticeships, weprepare them for a world with
those opportunities.
It gives them an opportunity toget a loan in that regard.
And if they can get a loan inthat regard, they're not getting
a student loan.
(49:49):
But what our world tells us isokay, you can't get a business
loan, you can't get a mortgage,you can't get a personal loan,
but I will lend you $178,000 tostudy communications right To
study.
You know pottery and when Igraduate I can go get a job in
(50:11):
communications or pottery.
But if I was studying potteryin the first place, it would
have been far more valuable forme to take a small business loan
, open a small pottery shop andbegin making pottery.
I can learn those disciplinesin a pottery studio.
I can't learn those disciplinesand successfully have my
pottery studio with $178,000 toa college.
(50:35):
I owe them 40 years of mypottery studio's income, unless,
for some reason, I becomewildly famous, right, but at
that point you might as well gooff and become an influencer,
right?
You got about the same chances.
John's roast of the week is theentire idea, now that the
federal government's trying tobuy your vote by forgiving your
student loans.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
Just drop that right there.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
No, forget that part, right?
I mean, the government's beenbuying votes since day one.
Heck, in the early 1800s youwouldn't get elected if you
didn't provide free whiskey.
So we're talking about buyingvotes is part of the system,
right?
That's broken, too sure,whatever, but forget about that
part of it.
We are saying we're patchworksolutions right, it's the same
(51:18):
thing with the Department ofEducation.
Oh, high-stakes testing is theproblem.
It's not allowing people oflower stature to get
opportunities at these bigschools.
Well, let's mandate rules togive those people opportunities
at bigger schools, instead ofsaying how can we prove these
kids actually can learn thisinformation?
(51:40):
Have this information right.
Sit down in an SAT and takeyour seven-hour test.
If you don't smash thatseven-hour test, sorry, you're
not getting to school, right?
That's how it was when I wasgrowing up and now it's.
I mean, depending on where youcome from and all these other
factors, you may not need tosmash it at all.
But now the kid who grew upunder the impression that he had
(52:03):
to smash this test isn'tgetting into that same school
and he is very, very wellqualified, or she is very well
qualified.
And so we're creating animbalance to try and solve a
structure problem.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Yeah, and when we were growing up, colleges just
to branch off what you just saidcolleges were looking for elite
colleges.
I mean, we're looking forstudents who were diversified,
right, diversified, diversified,diversified.
We want to see that you're aneight student, we want to see
that you're on this committee,we want to see that you
volunteer at your church, you'rean Eagle Scout and you also
(52:39):
like to volunteer at the YMCA orwhatever.
Like we want to see that youare stellar across the board.
That was the formula.
That's how I grew up.
That's why it was like makesure she's in sports, make sure
she takes a language, yada, yada, yada.
And then there was a shiftbecause everyone was stellar
across the board.
Now, like today, elite collegeswant someone who is deep right,
(53:02):
like, oh, this person wants tobe a nurse and everything she's
done up until this momentladders up to that.
Like she's done nineinternships, she's only 16 or 17
.
She's done nine internships athospitals.
She's, you know, done all theseAP courses.
She's done, you know, communitycollege, pre-med.
(53:23):
Everything is like it's this orbust and those are the kids
that they want.
Speaker 1 (53:28):
So it's like those poor kids who are in the
transition, who are like I'mdiversified, and then the
schools are like yeah, so iseveryone else, and the problem
that you run into, especiallywith that person, right, is she
just took out 170 000 in loansto become a nurse because since
she was six she's been planningon being a nurse and developed
this depth of bench, and nowshe's a.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
CPA.
She didn't do sports.
She loved tennis.
Didn't do tennis because itwouldn't help her in her nursing
career.
Like that was the.
That's the level now that theyhave to go to.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Yeah, and now she's a CPA because she realized after
being in the real nursing worldshe doesn't want to be a nurse.
Right, and this businesses willdevelop opportunities for
themselves where the money isRight.
So ever since we went to thefiat system, we got away from
gold.
Money's not real, so it's amatter of trying to figure out
how to grab that money.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
And so we will do a episode on innovating finance
and I will say nothing becauseit's way out of my depth.
And I will say nothing becauseit's way out of my depth.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
So you've got this world in which, because students
can sign their lives awayfinancially for the prospect of
an education, but they can't doso for the prospect of a
business or anything else,you've got diploma bills, these
schools that only basicallytrade you money for education.
(54:49):
And again, talking about thestructure, the federal
government doesn't ban them,doesn't even make a list of
these diploma mills.
They've got lists of everyaccredited university.
They do not have a list ofnon-accredited, clearly, diploma
mills, right?
So there isn't a list for thoseplaces because it's an industry
(55:10):
there's.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
But also if, if, if, a bachelor's degree is really
just about a piece of paper anda lot of in, a lot of, in most
cases, it's true, I mean unlessyou're very specialized or
continuing on.
Let's be real most, most ofwhat I learned I learned on the
(55:31):
job.
Yep.
Then there's no problem with adiploma mill.
Now, if you reform theeducation so that way, you
actually get knowledge andyou're taking that with you and
it's clear that you studied.
Speaker 1 (55:44):
It's not about the diploma mill.
It's about the fact that I cantake that loan Right At 18,.
Speaker 2 (55:49):
I can take out $50,000 a year Because it's a
degree from.
Yeah, it's in business.
Speaker 1 (55:55):
But with that same $50,000 a year, at that same
interest rate, if I started aplumbing company, I'd have that
$50,000 paid off by the end ofthe first year, easily Producing
revenue, exactly.
So we're not prioritizingproducing revenue.
We're not prioritizing learningthings that will actually
benefit us in the future.
We're prioritizing the machine.
(56:17):
Go to school, get good grades,get a good job Right.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
We're prioritizing that and that promise isn't
being delivered like it used to.
Speaker 1 (56:28):
No, of course it's not, because we're at a 35%
decline in factories, the jobswe're making these people for no
longer exist, so the return oninvestment is not there.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
You're growing a factory worker up until 12th
grade and then you're pushingthem into a knowledge worker
university.
It doesn't make any sense.
I mean that's an extremereductionist way to look at it.
But essentially the secondaryed is structured for factory
workers with a little bit ofvocational stuff thrown in over
the years.
And then you go to college andit's like we don't care what you
(57:01):
do with your time, but takethese soft skill, philosophical,
you know, higher level classesto prepare you to be a business
leader.
Speaker 1 (57:09):
It's like it's kind of a head spin all right,
education department fix it andon that I hope to hear back from
all of our educators come at usdon't be mad at us.
Speaker 2 (57:22):
We do.
We very much appreciate all youdo.
Speaker 1 (57:26):
But thank you so much for joining us.
We always appreciate your time.
Have a wonderful week.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.