If there is ever a place where, from my perspective and experience, a need for a colossal reformation, it needs to be within our educational venues. Both in the graduate and collegiate level, but probably more so as you start thinking of pre-emptive strikes in K-12. When you look at some of the data that came out in the book, The World is Flat, Freidman suggests that there are more genius level kids in India and China than the total enrollment of the US school system. Our kids are going to be competing for the same jobs. Our bulls eye better be more than “we satisfy the state standardized tests.”

Education needs to be the place where we are giving our kids tools to be successful in life. They may become 18 and graduate from their high schools, but they better be familiar with some core tools that they can take in to their life. Tools like collaboration and being in community with others. Not just circling the group and calling it a team arbitrarily, but being able to say we can call ourselves a team by way of how we perform and practice with each other. These are essential practices that teachers and administrators need to be instilling with our kids.

Learning how to be a learning community is very much about innovation and the innovative process. Being a self-starter and activator in your own learning experience, but not being somebody that once you learn it, poisons the water so that you have the advantage over the next person.

Sharing the conviction that it is not about your own personal achievement that makes for a great world or a great life, but it is about the synergy that can take place by way of sharing.  These are basic sandbox 101 rules - advocating for the best interests of the other while building high levels of trust within a social network.