gadgets , toys , cars , phones , equipment ... everything has changed . The one thing that has remained constant is the classroom and the concept of schooling . The classroom of today is no different from the classroom of fifty years ago . This is precisely why many of the innovators of today had to drop out of a system that was steeped in the traditions of the past .
A containing and limiting system that even regulates how fast you are permitted to learn cannot be trusted to take us into the future . Things that can be learned in three years of apprenticeship take so many years of different levels of education . This will not be sustainable with the generation raised on the Internet .
That point in time where the student knows more than the teacher is now and if the teacher still glories in their ten year old degrees they are truly in a bad place . Many studies have shown that a degrees relevance does not go beyond five years . Others have even put it at eighteen months . So a person gloating about a first class degree that they got a decade ago does not realize that the world has moved on .
This is the thinking behind the establishment of the Street University ( www . thestreetuniversity . com ) where learners and mentors can meet without the containment of the middleman called the school . We spend so much upgrading systems and gadgets . It ’ s time to upgrade the most valuable of all - our thinking .
We must never let our schooling interfere with our education . However when we look carefully at global trends over the years we will observe that this is exactly what has been happening .
When you compare the classroom of the past with the classroom of today there has been no change . It is still the same model where you have a know it all teacher in front of students who are graded on the basis of their memory of what has been taught and not an understanding of things .
School has rewarded memory over intelligence for numerous years and so the world simply accepted that memory and intelligence were the same thing . How wrong could we be ? There are so many fools who have a brilliant memory .
Albert Einstein said that logic gets you only from point A to B while imagination
The future of Africa is in the hands of the next generation and the quality of thinking of the next generation will be shaped by what is provided for them by the current generation . Every generation lays the foundation for the greatness of successive generations .
takes you everywhere and there lies our problem . We are so steeped in logical patterns and our schools are cauldrons of logic . This is why the greatest innovators had to pull themselves out of those classrooms
The fact is that people whose thinking has been shaped by the past cannot raise people to think differently . A people who have been conditioned to conform cannot suddenly become disruptors and they will not survive in the world shaped by disruption . School curriculum should never be shaped by assumptions . It should not be shaped by guess work . It should be shaped by disruption . By now there should be a study of MPesa in Kenyan schools to inspire and show kids what can be done .
BRCK , Ushahidi , Africa ’ s Talking and other Kenyan innovations are celebrated globally . Yet we would rather tell people about the past instead of preparing them for the future . Why are we not teaching about these innovations in our schools ?
Again , the classroom environment promotes individualistic people who are told that you win only when others lose yet we want them to come out to a world where collaboration and win-win is the driving force .
If the school curriculum won ’ t do it , then the mentors should do it . Pass it on . Create forums to inspire and impart . This is why we have established the Street University . The cycle of our success is complete only when we have raised others to do what we do and to do it better than us . It therefore follows that the highest dimension of leadership is that where the leader works hard to make himself operationally irrelevant . And , as I have found out in my business and life , when you do that you will never become irrelevant
There would never have been a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs without a foundation laid by people like Thomas J Watson of IBM and there would never have been a Thomas J Watson without the Founder of IBM , Charles Flint . A world is waiting to emerge that would never have been without you . Birth it by passing it on .
The environment in which we live today has many ‘[ teachers ’ who are not trained as teachers . The Internet produced a new crop of teachers that have captured the minds of young people all over the world . Some of them have millions of followers and the youth of today are hanging onto their every word and they have more influence on the youth than the conventional trained teacher . This is the new face of the teacher . No right minded youth will have a Kylie Jenner as a teacher and then opt for some boring academic encounter . The problem is not the academics . It is in the people who are custodians and communicators of the knowledge .
Until we make the teaching profession cool , we will not be able to attract the best minds and as long as we are that way , things will remain as they have always been .
The future of Africa is in the hands of the next generation and the quality of thinking of the next generation will be shaped by what is provided for them by the current generation . Every generation lays the foundation for the greatness of successive generations .
One of the greatest legacies of the Covid-19 pandemic is that it forced a lethargic and comfortable world to move forward . Before the pandemic , concepts like remote working were unconceivable in many minds but today it ’ s the norm . So great is the impact of this norm that we now have new expressions like zoom fatigue !
Unless we aggressively redefine what
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