Rupert Murdoch on education: a colossal failure of imagination

Rupert Murdoch isn't someone I'd normally have flocked to for advice on how to transform education, but I was delighted when a contact at the EU forwarded me a speech he had delivered to senior government officials from around the world this May.

Murdoch makes some powerful points that speak the language of Government and business, two groups that must be convinced the current conservative and Conservative means of bullying learning into doing better just will not do. Here are some of the most compelling parts:

Every CEO will tell you that we compete in a world that is changing faster than ever. That it is more competitive than ever and that it rewards success and punishes failure to a greater degree than ever before.

In other words, our world is increasingly, and rightly, a world of merit. In such a world, the greatest challenge for any enterprise is human capital: how to find it, develop it and keep it.

No one in this room needs a lecture about how talented people in tandem with technology are making our lives richer and fuller.

Everywhere we turn, digital advances are making workers more productive - creating jobs that did not exist only a few years ago, and liberating us from the old tyrannies of time and distance.

This is true in every area except one: Education.

Think about that. In every other part of life, someone who woke up after a fifty-year nap would not recognize the world around him.

…

My friends, what we have here is a colossal failure of imagination. Worse, it is an abdication of our responsibility to our children and grandchildren - and a limitation on our future. As Stendhal wrote: "Qui s'excuse, s'accuse".

We know the old answer - simply throwing money at the problem - doesn't work. In my own country, we've doubled our spending on primary and secondary education over the last three decades - while our test scores have remained largely flat. The reason this hasn't worked is that more money has fed a system that is no longer designed to educate - it's become a jobs program for teachers and administrators. And yet we Americans wonder why we have cities like Detroit where nearly half the population can't read and the disadvantaged are on a fast-track to failure.

The mandarins of mediocrity will tell you that the problem is that the kids they are teaching are too poor, or come from bad families, or are immigrants who do not understand the culture. This is absolute rubbish. It is arrogant, elitist and utterly unacceptable.

…

If we knew we had a gold mine on our property, we would do whatever it took to get that gold out of the ground. In education, by contrast, we keep the potential of millions of children buried in the ground.

Fortunately, we have the means at our disposal to transform lives.

...

Technology will never replace the teacher. What we can do is relieve some of the drudgery of teaching. And we can take advantage of the increasingly sophisticated analytics that will help teachers spend more time on the things that make us all more human and more creative.

Let me be clear. What I am speaking about is not the outline of some exotic, distant, fictional future. Everything I have mentioned is something I have seen in the here and now.

Download Murdoch on Education - The Last Frontier, May 2011 - it's worth 10 minutes of your time.

Photo from the World Economic Forum.

Comments

[stlgretchen]

And how will Mr. Murdoch pay for this technology he wants so badly? With your tax money. And who will benefit from this infusion of taxes?

Mr. Murdoch will reap quite handsomely as he purchased 'Wireless Generation' to provide this service.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-news-corp-shells-out-360-million-for-ed-tech-company-wireless-generatio/

This is philanthropy that makes the philanthropist richer. Bill Gates will become even richer as computer based assessments are mandated in the classrooms for test taking. And the companies providing the assessments? Why, they've already been selected by the DOE: other companies need not apply at this time.

What a gig.

[monika hardy]

i don't know if you are familiar with Nic Askew's brilliantly humane films.. but this new one in particular speaks to this post.. recovering the diamonds: http://www.soulbiographies.com/2011/06/recovering-the-diamonds/

thank you Ewan..

[Erica11]

Rupert Murdoch isn't someone I'd usually have faithful to for advice on how to change education, but I was pleased .

[paul martin]

"This is true in every area except one: Education"

GLOWingly incorrect - why give the oxygen of publicity to another teacher basher