Kelly connects with Tony Wagner, senior research fellow at the Learning Policy Institute and former codirector of Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Change Leadership Group. They discuss his latest book – co-written with Ulrik Juul Christensen: “Mastery: Why Deeper Learning is Essential in an Age of Distraction.”  

When I’m talking about improv, I note that improv is like yoga for your social skills, that it’s loud, noisy group mindfulness, that’s it’s a practice in being unpracticed. I think these are the qualities you’re looking for in education. 

“Well, I think that’s a great observation, Kelly. I’d never connected it to improv, but now that you’ve said it, it makes complete sense. I mean, first and foremost, we live in a chaotic world. It’s an economy of entertainment, an economy of distraction. And so, it’s to be able to stay agile and adaptable, to be able to respond creatively that are hallmarks of improvisation and are certainly competencies that every young person needs to leave school with today.” 

First and foremost, the educational system we use today is no longer useful. 

“We created this education system at the dawn of the industrial era, and it was basically an anomaly compared to how people learned for generations and centuries. We created it because we had to standardize a kind of a mass assembly line system for large numbers of people who needed basic education. At the time, it was a time of knowledge scarcity. So, the whole focus on academic content knowledge made some sense, I guess. But today we have the exact opposite problem. We have information-overload. We have information changing constantly. In today’s world, no one cares how much you know anymore. What the world cares about, what matters most, is not what you know, but what you can do with what you know. And our education system that’s focused on siloed academic content knowledge simply does not teach and assess the essential skills for work for citizenship or for personal health and wellbeing.” 

So, what do we do? 

“With respect to teaching, we have to move from the idea of teacher being the content giver, the expert on stage to the guide on the side. From information to inspiration is the real source of thinking about teaching. And then with respect to curriculum: it’s important to teach basic content knowledge, but far more important today is to teach essential skills for work, learning, and citizenship. And then finally, if we really want to motivate all kids to achieve mastery, then we’re going to have to rely much more on intrinsic motivation. People don’t talk enough about motivation for learning. We simply assume carrots and sticks are going to work, but the research is overwhelmingly clear – what it motivates is compliance, doing the minimum you have to do to get an A or to pass the course. Whereas the idea of intrinsic motivation, which begins with curiosity, having questions, wanting to pursue interests, really is the wellspring of authentic knowing and learning.” 

Photo Credit: PJ Blankenhorn