Innovation...

Image Credit: Tutor2udotnet

On Global Public Square (GPS), Fareed Zakaria will broadcast a special on CNN asking the question: "Are we still an innovation nation?" 8 PM EST tonight.

Wikipedia gives a timeline of American inventions from before 1890 to 2009, roughly.

I've often had the feeling that the society we've allowed to form around our children have resulted in the current crisis of employment, competence and innovation. On this blog, I've discussed that the US is no longer publishing scientific papers at the rate they used to, largely due to our lackluster performance in math, science, engineering and technology.

As a teacher whether I taught Pre-Calculus, Algebra I or Physics, no matter the campus the question was the same variant of: "mister, it don't take all that, does it?"

The books I'm recommending below I have either read ("Death and Life..."), or am currently reading ("The Dumbest Generation..."). For me, reading both is a means of...closure.

In Texas, there was the pressure to get the TAKS scores up, so teaching the principles of problem-solving, a skill transferable to any field beyond science and math, took up far too much class time.

Until I read Dr. Ravitch's book, I didn't know how much of a battering ram standardized tests had become nationally. I'm aware of schools in Austin closed, principals and teachers fired and/or contracts "non-renewed" because of test scores. The caveat being high test scores in English language arts doesn't mean the same child can read a chapter in "A Tale of Two Cities" and write an essay about it: she's been trained to eliminate the least likely answers and choose the most likely answer - a, b, c or d, not expound on something offline that doesn't involve other teenagers.

Which seems the theme of Dr. Bauerlein's tome. Teens of every generation have underlying similar themes: 1) emerging sexuality, 2) styles of dress, 3) types of music, 4) leisure pursuits. The forth item tends to mean something involving electronics and online avatars, which teens appreciate, but I balk at calling them "tech savvy." I bore witness to a disruptive argument in physics class (unrelated to the subject at hand) that started the night before with a young lady's avatar...on Facebook. The digital age seems to make self-centered teens even more so, prolonging adolescence, making teen culture predominant, and civics, literature, mathematics, science, politics, and becoming adults secondary. "American Idol is more important!" (Answer to the author's question of knowing more about the "reality show" than knowing who the Speaker of the House of Representatives is.)

I spend a considerable amount of time offline...reading.

Leisure pursuits for my generation was basketball before car (and dating), transistor radios, comic books on rainy Saturdays, and nothing happened until all homework was done -- "boob tube" off! I did not grow up in comfortable surroundings, and education was sold to my generation as changing that paradigm.

I don't think the human mind was designed to fathom one million players in a game all over the globe in different time zones, losing sleep and therefore concentration ability in classes. Nor do I think young minds can fathom problem-solving skills, the Scientific Method or The Canterbury Tales when the most important thing to young human minds is answering one of two-hundred text messages sent within their network of friends PER DAY. The result is a version of Jetson's digital index operator...on steroids.

You can't innovate if you're only a sophisticated end-user keen on extending adolescence.

Unfortunately, our middle class workers are aging towards retirement and oblivion, and the potential replacement workers will not leave their parent's homes, rooms and virtual avatars to make livings for themselves.