>>Female Presenter: It's my privilege today to introduce Tony Wagner. Who I consider to
be one of the most innovative and forward thinking thought leaders in education today.
I could read his long list of accomplishments. His work at Harvard. His work as a teacher.
And as as principal. But you could read that all on his website at Tony Wagner dot com
if you'd like to. And I just wanna basically let you know that this book that he's written
"Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World" is really
a fabulous read. We're gonna be selling it outside, right outside there. You can buy
a copy and have Tony sign it afterward and he's gonna be kind of giving an overview of
the work he's seen in this space. So please welcome Tony Wagner.
[applause]
>>Tony Wagner: Delighted. Good morning. Thank you, thank you. It's really a pleasure to
be here. A lot more fun than being at Microsoft, where I was three weeks ago. I have to tell
you.
[laughter]
But, that's not for attribution.
How many of you here are parents? Raise your hands.
How many of you here are educators? Raise your hands.
OK. I love to begin with a quote from Einstein. "The formulation of the problem is often more
essential than the solution." We talk a lot about problem solving. Problem identification
is arguably the most important skill of the 21st century. For 25 years we've been talking
about failing schools and the need to reform education. Part of the problem is it's a little
bit punitive language. Anybody wanna go to reform school? Raise your hands. It's very
punitive. [laughter]
But beyond that I think that problem is not the right problem. If we merely aspire to
bring our disadvantaged students up to the levels of achievement of our middle class
students, we will fail all of our students. And put our economy in even greater jeopardy.
So that's what I wanna talk about.
Fundamentally the problem is this. Our system of education is obsolete. And needs reinventing.
Not reforming. And that is a completely different education problem. And guess what? Google
is mostly to blame for that obsolescence. I'm about to explain why. Because of Google
and other events, what one knows today no longer matters? How much you know is not a
competitive advantage. Information has become commoditized. It's like air. It's like water.
It's on every internet connected device, growing exponentially.
How many of you had to memorize the periodic table in high school? Raise your hands. How
many elements were there?
[quiet audience response]
I'm sorry, I didn't hear that answer.
[audience members call out answers loudly] [laughter]
Whatever answer you gave was wrong, because two more were added last week. If you don't
believe me Google it.
[laughter]
Ah, how many of you had to memorize the state capitals? Raise your hands. OK. Let's have
a competition. How many of you would like to recite them from memory while I Google
them and let's see who's quicker?
[laughter]
Memory is not something we need to think about educating as we have in the past. The world
no longer cares how much you know. What the world cares about is what you can do with
what you know. And that is a completely different education problem. It's not about filling
people up with more knowledge. It's about skill and it's about will. So I'm gonna be
talking about skill and will in the context of education.
Back in 2005, I read "The World Is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. How many of you have read