"Wen Jiabao, the (then) Chinese premier, said in August 2010: ‘We must encourage students to think independently, freely express themselves, get them to believe in themselves, protect and stimulate their imagination and creativity’ " - if this is genuinely the policy of the Chinese government there is little to fear from the emergence of China as a superpower - we are used to thinking of China as a threat to the West, but it is conceivable that Chinese influence may be beneficial to mankind.
"in the 20th century... the goal of a school system was to sort children out – the minority who would go to university, fill the professions and go on to lead the country, from the rest who would work in manual, skilled, semi-skilled or unskilled jobs. With that goal, a school system needed to provide high academic standards only for a few, while the rest needed the basics. Much of the trauma surrounding contemporary education reform has its roots in the need to abandon this outdated model" - this sounds like an exercise in double-think! Education in the United Kingdom has dumbed down to the extent that semi-skilled office workers educated in the 1950s and 1960s have far higher standards of literacy and general education than most of today's university graduates. And today the professions (all sectors) are crammed with the off-spring of the elite (from both left and right) whereas in previous decades the grammar schools provided a route for ordinary people to enter the professions.
"The 21st century, by contrast, demands that ...all need a standard of education that will enable them to adapt and change as they respond to the constant dramatic shifts in the global labour market" - not sure I like this reference to a "global labour market". Are we going to see the emergence of a global elite moving around the world and paying minimal tax, while at the same time a class of global serfs is used to drive down working class wages? Where is the democratic consent in this model?
"In That Used to be Us by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum: the world increasingly will be divided between high-imagination-developing countries, which encourage and enable the imagination and extras of their people, and low-imagination-enabling countries, which suppress or simply fail to develop their people’s creative capacities and abilities to spark new ideas, start up new industries and nurture their own “extra”’ " - the United Kingdom is already a high-imagination country, but we continually fail to take full advantage of innovations which tend to be "sparked" here and taken to production overseas.
"...success is a matter of hard work, persistence and good coaching (10,000 hours of deliberate practice being the key to reaching high levels of performance) rather than some special gift" - I have read this before but not entirely sure it can be true. Where are the examples? 10,000 hours if you divide it up into forty-hour weeks roughly equates to five years. A 3-year university course plus two years post-grad study will take someone to minimum competence level but not really to "high levels of performance".
"in the 20th century... the goal of a school system was to sort children out – the minority who would go to university, fill the professions and go on to lead the country, from the rest who would work in manual, skilled, semi-skilled or unskilled jobs. With that goal, a school system needed to provide high academic standards only for a few, while the rest needed the basics. Much of the trauma surrounding contemporary education reform has its roots in the need to abandon this outdated model" - this sounds like an exercise in double-think! Education in the United Kingdom has dumbed down to the extent that semi-skilled office workers educated in the 1950s and 1960s have far higher standards of literacy and general education than most of today's university graduates. And today the professions (all sectors) are crammed with the off-spring of the elite (from both left and right) whereas in previous decades the grammar schools provided a route for ordinary people to enter the professions.
"The 21st century, by contrast, demands that ...all need a standard of education that will enable them to adapt and change as they respond to the constant dramatic shifts in the global labour market" - not sure I like this reference to a "global labour market". Are we going to see the emergence of a global elite moving around the world and paying minimal tax, while at the same time a class of global serfs is used to drive down working class wages? Where is the democratic consent in this model?
"In That Used to be Us by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum: the world increasingly will be divided between high-imagination-developing countries, which encourage and enable the imagination and extras of their people, and low-imagination-enabling countries, which suppress or simply fail to develop their people’s creative capacities and abilities to spark new ideas, start up new industries and nurture their own “extra”’ " - the United Kingdom is already a high-imagination country, but we continually fail to take full advantage of innovations which tend to be "sparked" here and taken to production overseas.
"...success is a matter of hard work, persistence and good coaching (10,000 hours of deliberate practice being the key to reaching high levels of performance) rather than some special gift" - I have read this before but not entirely sure it can be true. Where are the examples? 10,000 hours if you divide it up into forty-hour weeks roughly equates to five years. A 3-year university course plus two years post-grad study will take someone to minimum competence level but not really to "high levels of performance".
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