The problem with American education today is that we try to mold employees, rather than inspire future leaders and entrepreneurs, according to scholar Yong Zhao.
Zhao, an author and dean for global education at the University of Oregon, spoke Wednesday night at Pennridge High School about helping students thrive in today’s tough economic environment.
Traditionally, he said, schools have approached education as a “sausage-making” process: taking students’ individual differences, diversity, curiosity, passion and creativity and molding them into “employable skills.”
Such skills are often for jobs that are no longer available in the age of globalization and technology. Today’s economy requires creativity and innovation for success, he said.
In America, entrepreneurs and creative people have often thrived in spite of their education, not because of it, Zhao said, pointing to the high number of college dropouts who have gone on to form multimillion-dollar tech companies in the Silicon Valley.
Instead of trying to narrow students into a standardized mode of learning, Zhao said education should be about identifying children’s passions and helping them expand their knowledge.
“Education is not about fixing someone’s deficits, but enhancing their strengths,” Zhao said.
When high-stakes testing and competitive ranking become the top goals of education, something else is lost, what Zhao called the “side effects of education.” Focusing on answering questions quickly makes students forget the joy of asking questions, stifles their curiosity.
Zhao advised parents, educators and students to de-emphasize test results when possible.
“Forget about standards; make something great in the process (of education),” he said.
He advocates a personalized curriculum that follows the child’s interests; product-oriented learning, where students focus their time on creating something of value; and the global campus, figuring out a way to use those products around the world.
Pennridge educators say they invited Zhao to speak to the community because the district has always focused on providing students with more than just standardized knowledge.
“I think that one of the things that sets this district apart is that we value more than just basic skills and knowledge,” said Matt Smith, Pennridge’s director of curriculum and instructional technology. “We owe (students) the skills they need to be successful,” he added, pointing to things like creativity, problem solving and innovation.
Zhao has published more than 100 articles and 20 books, including “Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization.” He has designed schools that cultivate global competence, developed computer games for language learning and founded research and development institutions to explore innovative education models.
He was born in China’s Sichuan Province and earned his bachelor’s degree in English language education from the Sichuan Institute of Foreign Languages in Chongqing, China, in 1986.
After teaching English in China for six years, he went to Linfield College in Oregon as a visiting scholar in 1992. He then began graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993. He received a master’s in education in 1994 and a doctorate in 1996.
Zhao details his ideas about public education on his website, zhaolearning.com.
Theresa Hegel: 215-345-3187; email: firstname.lastname@example.org; Twitter: @theresahegel.