Best Tool... EVER!

Here's a simple question.  What is the greatest tool we will ever own in our lifetime?  Let’s first define what we mean by “tool”.  For this question, tool means anything we may use to benefit our life experience, improve our competitive advantages in life, or simply make anything we are doing easier.  Owning it means we have all rights and permissions to control, change, keep, or destroy it.  So, which one is the greatest?

A car is a tool.  A computer is a tool.  A smart phone is a tool.  A pan for cooking?  A refrigerator?  Hammers, drills, rakes, shovels, pens, toothbrushes, hairbrushes, lightbulbs, faucets, air conditioners, shoes, and on and on we could go, right?  These are all good tools that benefit us.  But which one is the greatest?  A smart phone can do an incredible amount of work for us – informing, entertaining, storing, tracking, reminding, and connecting.  Our PC and Mac computers drive a ton of global interaction, creative problem solving, thought capturing, and work station activity.  Our cars and trucks move us and others… and our stuff, around the regions we live in.  And ships and planes cover our global transportation needs so we can have our phones, computers, and cars.  Hmmm.  That seems important.  But which of these tools is the greatest?

Once we have figured out and agreed upon which one is the greatest I have another question, “Are our schools teaching children how to master that tool?”  If it is a smart phone, are schools teaching kids how to master their devices, to analyze and evaluate apps, be aware of threats and dangers, or even to care for and maintain them?  Are they teaching kids to understand PCs from the motherboard to each line of code? Or are they barely teaching them the basics – from the Start button to the usefulness of every toolbar, function, and command in every program?  Do the teachers even know this stuff themselves?

I say, the greatest tool we will ever own is our mind.  It is a vast and powerful device and I can think of nothing more important to teach our children than how to master their understanding of how their own minds work.  I’m talking basic stuff like observation, contemplation, recollection, calculation, communication.  Stuff like intake, processing, and output.  How language works.  How we end up with feelings.  How individualized we all are.  How creativity works.  How a mind is strengthened through practice and mental exercises.  How we can be paid for using our minds.  How it keeps us safe.  How it dares and intrigues us into new challenges.

PCs, mobile devices, cars, air conditioners, and power saws, all come with a manual to help us learn about the basics.  If schools are supposed to be preparing children for life, why do they not get a Mind Manual?

Look at any school system and you will see that it is focused on teaching, not learning.  The greatest thing our minds do is learn, but do we teach children how it does that?  Do we ask them to try different ways of learning as the owners of the tool?  Not very well. 

STEAM pedagogy is just starting to open new avenues of “teaching to the mind”, but, by far and away, the progress is badly lagging behind our global needs and the global competition.  This is where the inertia of ignorance hinders our speed of acceleration, our pace of improvement, and our ability to win jobs, win contracts, create better products, and sell to an intelligent global market.  Why aren’t teacher colleges racing ahead to create the best mental development processes?  Why aren’t teachers “learning centric” instead of delivery centric?  It's called ignorance.  They don't know how learning works and they don't know how to teach to it.

Teacher colleges get better and better at teaching teachers how to teach, but the end user is a learner, and without focusing on that, they miss the boat.  Think about a baker.  If a baker goes to baking school and becomes a great baker they can become a baking teacher.  Better and better baking may be good, but if the breads and cupcakes don't taste good, they won't be eaten.  The end user rules the results.  You may have a wonderfully tall and ornate wedding cake, but if it tastes like paste, what good is it?  Learner centric strategies focus on facilitating the learner's process, their issues, their individual ways and needs, and their individual progress.  Honestly, what matters more than that?

The human mind is the most versatile, complex, capable, instantaneous, and enormous tool we will ever own.  So, why don’t schools teach to it directly?  Sure, math develops many cognitive skills.  Language helps to increase our ability to express mental output.  History gives us contextual relevance and “lessons learned by others”, and science teaches us what others have discovered.  Music class teaches us the language of the G and Treble clef notes.  Art class teaches us paint and drawing skills.  And computer class teaches us which buttons to push.  But, do we teach students to engineer their own mental path?  Do we teach them to think like a scientist, asking, "How do we know this?" Do we teach them to study their own history for "lessons learned"?  Or how to write their own songs, how to decide which brush and color best represents their thought, and how to build a new computer program that fits their personal way of thinking?

From birth, children are very good at knowing what they want.  They have a mind and they use it at a very high rate of speed, and improve its functional ability at a very high rate of adaptation, emulation, and improvisation. By age two they can tell you what they want and why.  By age three, students on pre-school learning programs are already learning basic math and language skills, reading, drawing, memorizing, and much more.  So, why don’t our schools deepen this level of understanding, lengthen these skills and teach the students how this tool works?   Why don't teaching colleges race to understand this and alter what they do because of what they just learned?  Because they are not "learning centric".  Why don't schools teach children how their memory works?  Or teach them about imagination?  They could easily teach them about comparative analysis.  Teach them how to construct their own pedagogical scaffolding.  Teach them to crave meta-cognitive data from assessments.  Not possible?  Wrong.

Ask four students to memorize a series of numbers, let’s say the value of Pi.  Tell them they are practicing a mental function called memory.  Tell them they are not assessed against each other, but only against their own previous efforts.  They will work at their own pace.  They will memorize whatever they do.  3.14 at first.  But, the next time, when they memorize 3.1415926 they will want to know how well they did.   The third time, when they have memorized 3.14159265358979323 they will be able to see their mind doing the work and care about ways of improving their memory skills when such lessons are taught to them.  They will use these lessons to improve their next efforts and their next assessments.  This is a meta-cognitive decision to gain assessment data to evaluate their deliberate efforts to improve how their mind works.  They will be able to own their control of the device and feel responsible for its growth.  If we are teaching people how to drive a car, isn't it worth teaching them how the car works?  Doesn't this enable them better?  Doesn't this allow them to more fully understand how to use the vehicle?

If a student wants to enter the clothing industry, and knows this at age ten, why can’t the schools teach them about the history of clothing, the science of textiles, the engineering of garment manufacturing, the economy of seasonal markets, and the art work of drawing and coloring unique designs?  You've got eight years until they graduate.  Why can’t this student learn these specifics? 

Schools could directly teach students how to manage their own learning, how to strengthen their mental capabilities, how to take responsibility for their tool’s use and worth, and how to use these abilities to take them where they want to go in life.

But, that’s not what school is… is it?

But, it could be.