As a result of many schools "teaching to the test" and/or focusing on the memorization of facts, students are losing out on future job opportunities. The changing global economy demands innovation and creativity as well as communication skills. If schools are not meeting those demands, the future employment of students graduating high school and college could be in jeopardy.
Are Schools Killing Creativity?
Sir Ken Robinson, visionary cultural leader and an author of the books, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything and Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative says, “I believe this passionately: that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out if it.” (TED, 2006) He goes on to explain how children are naturally creative. They innovate and imagine often which is one of the key skills needed to land a good job in today's changing global economy. The irony is that the creativity and innovation they possess at a young age is sometimes discouraged and minimized as they focus on acing the test or memorizing a lists of words and rote information. The significance for learners today in this case is that, without creativity, coming up with innovative solutions to satisfy the demands of the global economy will be difficult. For high tech companies like Apple who seek employees who can create new products such as the iPhone, it might just be more profitable to hire someone else outside the United States that did not have their creativity stifled while they went through school.
High Tech Jobs Leave U.S.
According to a WashingtonPost article, the National Science Board reports that the United States has lost over one fourth of its high-tech jobs in the last decade (Whoriskey, P. 2012). In the 21st Century, the job market is much wider because of the internet. Engineers and other high tech professionals graduating from college will have a much harder time getting a job today than they did twenty years ago. Employers looking to hire will likely take on someone who is highly innovative over someone who is not. This is an issue of great concern to those students in areas of highly technical study in the United States.
Are Students Prepared to Communicate in the Global Economy?
The achievement gap also hinders a student's ability to communicate in the 21st Century workplace. Engineers working in today’s global economy must not only be creative and innovative, but they must also work with a variety of people from differing cultural backgrounds. They may also have to work in a country other than the United States. Working with people from other cultures and living in other countries increases the expectations for engineers to communicate. A study was done by the International Journal of Learning in which students who had recently completed their required ten-month internships were questioned as to how adequately they were prepared for the various types of communication they encountered during their internships. Less than half of the 181 students questioned said that they were well prepared for every type of communication in the study. (Bhattacharyya, E. Nordin, S. Salleh, R. 2009). (See Table 1) According to these students, there was an obvious disconnect between the communication skills they were taught in school versus what was necessary in the workplace. Had students been more adequately prepared for 21st century workplace communication in school, their perception of communicative preparedness during their internships would have been much higher. This is significant to learners in that in order to compete in the global economy, learners will have to acquire better communication skills in their years of education.
Table 1:
Bhattacharyya, E. Nordin, S. Salleh, R. 2009, p. 10