Stop Stealing Dreams (what is school for?) - Seth Godin

e obedient helped us educate them. And we needed obedient workers, and the
work of educating them reinforced the desired behavior.
As the industrial age peters out, as the growth fades away, the challenge is this:
training creative, independent, and innovative artists is new to us. We can’t use
the old tools, because resorting to obedience to teach passion just isn’t going to
work. Our instinct, the easy go-to tool of activating the amygdala, isn’t going to
work this time.
31. Doubt and certainty
The industrial structure of school demands that we teach things for certain.
Testable things. Things beyond question. After all, if topics are open to
challenge, who will challenge them? Our students. But students aren’t there to
challenge—they are there to be indoctrinated, to accept and obey.
Our new civic and scientific and professional life, though, is all about doubt. About
questioning the status quo, questioning marketing or political claims, and most of
all, questioning what’s next.
The obligation of the new school is to teach reasonable doubt. Not the unreasonable
doubt of the wild-eyed heckler, but the evidence-based doubt of the
questioning scientist and the reason-based doubt of the skilled debater.