Professional Documents
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Introduction
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Introduction
matter most for our countrys future has become even more urgent for
me as I have followed the recent education-reform debates in the United
States and elsewhere. I am frankly appalled at the idea, now widely held,
that the best measure of teachers effectiveness is students performance
on standardized, multiple-choice tests. I am not a fan of teacher tenure,
and I believe strongly in accountability for improved student learning.
However, most policy makersand many school administratorshave
absolutely no idea what kind of instruction is required to produce students who can think critically and creatively, communicate effectively,
and collaborate versus merely score well on a test. They are also clueless
about what kind of teaching best motivates this generation to learn. And
the tests that policy makers continue to use as an indication of educational progress do not measure any of the skills that matter most today.
We need more profiles of quality instructionand better sources of evidence of resultsto inform the education debate.
Since the publication of The Global Achievement Gap, I have been
inundated with e-mails from concerned parents. They know their childrens schools are not teaching the skills that they will need, and the parents want to know what they can do. I have my own experience as the
father of three wonderful children, now grown with children of their
own, but that hardly seems like a sufficient basis for giving advice to other
parents. How do parents nurture some of the important skills and attributes of their children? I began to wonder.
In the last few years, I have had opportunities to work with highly
innovative companies such as Apple, Cisco Systems, and Scholastic, as
well as with senior leaders in the US Army. I have been fascinated by how
these leaders see the world and deal with the accelerating pace of change.
I became interested in what the best employers do to develop the capacities of young people to be innovators. I also recently met with education
leaders and visited schools in Finland, whose education system is considered the best in the world. It is also credited with helping to produce one
of the most innovative economies in the world. I wanted to explore what
lessons we might learn from Finlands success.
Finally, I have continued to be intrigued by this so-called net generaxi
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was screened by all of the presidential candidates in 2008 and has sold
more than twenty thousand copies. We met at an Investment in America
Forum at West Point several years ago, and we recently collaborated on a
film about Finlands education system, The Finland Phenomenon: Inside
the Worlds Most Surprising School System.3 When I told Bob about plans
for this new book, he urged me to make it a truly innovative book in
its formatand not just a book about innovation. So throughout these
pages, you will find a series of cues that direct you to a website where you
can watch special video content.
Whether you are a parent, teacher (preschool through college), mentor, employer, or policy maker, I think you will find that the print and
video profiles of these young innovators, as well as the ecosystems that
have helped them to develop their capacities, have a great deal to teach
us all. I know that I wasand continue to beinspired by the people
whom I interviewed for this project. So I invite you to read, watch, listen,
learnand then to reflect, share, and discuss with your friends and colleagues. For if we are to create a strong economic future and a sustainable
way of life for our children and grandchildren, we all have much that we
can and must do together.
VIDEO CUE:
Wagner on Why I Wrote This Book
Go to www.creatinginnovators.com
to watch the video.
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