Prepare Our Kids for Life, Not Standardized Tests | Ted Dintersmith | TEDxFargo

This started strangely when my

kids

were in high school. I received an email from the school saying that we will have a session next week to explain to them what we are doing to teach their children important

life

skills and as a parent that is irresistible, but that was the essence of the communication, teaching them your children important

life

skills and if it had been more descriptive I wouldn't be here today, but because it was so concise and so vague, I spent a week saying what schools will and should actually cover. be doing to teach you important skills that are useful in life and I started making my list and my list included things that were skills like inventive problem solving or communication or teamwork or figuring out complex situations or character traits and characteristics like determination and perseverance and ingenuity being able to face failure being bold or appreciating the wonder of nature and the human achievements or capabilities we all need how to set audacious goals for yourself learning how to learn being able to persevere through difficulties finding your passion and purpose in life and discover how you can improve your world so I made that list.

I put it on a piece of paper but left a lot of blank space on the paper because I knew I would hear a lot more than that and I wanted to take notes. I learned from this session and I expected to be surprised and it surprised me so the session consisted of the initiative that they were unleashing. It was 45 minutes a month these high school children would go to a presentation led by the gym teachers and they would choose the problem or challenge of the month, like this that if you didn't want

kids

to ever smoke, we would show the most gruesome, gruesome videos of tar infested lungs and the advanced stages of tongue and mouth cancer and somehow that would be transformative, transformative for our kids and so I left that session. and somehow I felt vaguely dissatisfied and when I got home I began to think about my children's education.

I had always cared about his education, but I think like most parents, I really focused on two things that I focused on. how my kids were doing, what grades they were getting and I focused on how much they were doing, whether they were trying hard and doing their homework, but I never stepped back and said what are they doing let alone how it relates to life, so I made a big sheet that I divided into two columns that I said here I'm going to keep track of the things that they're doing in school that help them

prepare

for life and here I'm going to keep track of the things that are irrelevant and I'm just going to pay attention and I'll watch this for a few days, weeks or months and see what pattern emerges and to my surprise the column on the right, the irrelevant column, was full and then something in less than a week and when I say the names of the things that were on it you will immediately associate them with school and the reason is that that is the only place you used them.

Things like factoring polynomials or gerunds or Coulomb's law. To the left of the column of what

prepare

s children for life. Best to get the benefit of the doubt, that column remains stubbornly empty, but that's not what really worried me. What worried me was that I ended up having to add a third column and that third column were things that would jeopardize or harm a child's prospects in life and I knew something about that because I dedicated my career to innovation and as a venture capitalist. professional risk supporting some of the leading for-profit but also social entrepreneurs, people who want to make this world better, I knew two things with the One of the clearest was that innovations that advance at full speed in a way that none of We can't even imagine, every structured job in the economy if it hasn't disappeared it will already disappear, so children who go through education are simply trained to follow instructions and jump over obstacles that our children will be marginalized or chronically unemployed and that's not ten children and a hundred children, that's millions of children, but the second thing I knew is that this was a time of incredible opportunities and if you look at the characteristics that you see in every five years. inquisitive old creative old totally comfortable with taking risks and failing if we could preserve them this would be the best time for our young adults, but my list of things were happening at school that endangered children, perspectives were around that and that we were actively in schools discouraging the elimination of those types of characteristics and traits and that changed my life.

My life in many ways stopped being a person and began to be a cause for the displeasure of my wife and children and I began to travel. everywhere and met people reading books. I watched every documentary on education that I could find and in the process I learned a lot and one of the things that I learned and one of the things that I thought would discourage me was the design of our schools because here I am looking at this thing that says that children should be good at In 1893, the committee of 10 said the world would shift from agriculture to manufacturing;

There will be millions of opportunities for young children to do the same task over and over again efficiently and without errors, while Henry Ford does not need creative audacity. innovative assembly line workers, so let's organize a school to promote efficiency and routine execution of operations and lists discourage creativity and that is a school system that we also changed over the course of a period of about 20 years from 1893 to early 1900 and it worked and America became the greatest country on Earth and we created a robust, strong middle class and we were the envy of the world in which we saved the world in World War II, but then what happened It was a quick preview: do they have the same features we would expect?

The committee of 10 somehow failed to materialize in the 20th century and when we even got to the 1980s, it was clear that our educational model had lost steam, so a report was made in 1983 on education called one nation. at risk. and that report had this telling sentence that said that if our education system had been imposed on us by a foreign country we would declare it an act of war, think of it as an act of war, but what did our equivalent of the Committee of 10 do, Did the philanthropists and policymakers and businesspeople who can really influence education step back and say we are transitioning from manufacturing to innovation and just as in the last century we changed our model, we need to change it again , that's not the path we take, that's not the case? the choice we made and then we said: let's take the same outdated system and let's improve it by doing it more intensively and let's test and measure more carefully and not really think about how relevant it is to life, but just put pressure on our schools to catch up with South Korea and Singapore on these

standardized

testing measures and the results, I think you all know, have been catastrophic and you would think that being immersed in that for this period of time, I would feel incredibly discouraged, but I wasn't because At the same time I was visiting the schools they were doing the most incredible things.

It's not that we don't know what we should do with our schools. It's not that we haven't figured out how to prepare our children. for a very different world that we as adults grew up in, we know that it's just that they are isolated pockets of great innovation and practices, so what I said is that my contribution to this should be how can I spread that message, how I can share that. vision of schools that are schools of possibility and hope rather than placement and measuring percentiles on

standardized

tests

, so the vehicle I chose to do it in is by no means a filmmaker, but I believe in the power of film and that's why I made a I searched for six months and found a documentary that I think is the best in the country.

I supported him and his team for two years to film all over the country in all types of situations, all demographics, all geographies, all age groups and all types of public private charter schools have captured history show to our audience what schools are capable of doing show our audience what students and teachers can do if we trust them and allow them to participate and inspire and things that are authentic and that is the film called most likely to be successful. in January at Sundance, since then we've been to over a dozen major film festivals, we've been to every major educational conference, we've had over a thousand schools request that film because when you're there and I've been to 50 these QAS now there was a receptive audience when they saw school situations that are aligned with life preparation, they are very excited and engaged and people over and over again say this is what we have to do and this is why what I am doing.

From now on, I'm taking this movie to all 50 states, so last night I called my wife and she couldn't be here, but this is what I said: It was a very short phone call because in between things I said that Elizabeth Fargo is amazing. and I said we'll be back here and I said we'll be back here soon, but when I take this film to a community I can only make a small amount on my own. I can be here. I can bring the movie, but I have to do it in the future. words by Blanche DuBois from the streetcar called desire I have to rely on the kindness of strangers and so what I am asking of this community and all 50 states is to find people who share this vision of what schools are about.

They are able to bring together an audience that includes teachers, parents and students, but also includes their communities, their state's equivalent of the committee of 10, the people who make the most important decisions about their children's future and let them know this important message our country is the most innovative and determined on the face of the planet in an era that asks for these skills, let's educate our strengths instead of chasing Shanghai and South Korea in standardized

tests

, let's change the center of the universe and education from responsibility and failed testing measures and make the center of education about inspiration, commitment, confidence and purpose, and let's take the message to all schools that what we want you to do is prepare our children for life, so thank you.