With all due deference to the popular booksWho Moved My Cheese? and Our Iceberg is Melting, when it comes to the state of education, the cheese has been moved and the iceberg has melted. The education model that for decades prepared students to graduate from high school and attend college, to participate in their communities, and to succeed in life-long careers no longer meets their needs.
Students today live in a world that is fundamentally different from the one in which we've so long been comfortable. Kids are savvy about navigating a technological environment that seems foreign to many educators. Students are asking critical questions that we may not be prepared to answer. As educators, our role is to teach students how to participate in a world without boundaries, to prepare them with confidence and optimism for a future we may not fully understand. Our primary aim must be more farsighted than simply enabling students to do well in school. We must focus on enabling students to succeed in the lives they will lead outside of school. This success must come by design, not by chance.
Our collective efforts as an education community should be rapid, relevant, and responsive. We must address the design flaws in our education system and listen to those who tell us to do things differently—to universalize, humanize, and personalize the system. To do this, educators must also be learners, learning from one another, learning from our mistakes, and learning from the children who have trusted us with their future. The American writer and psychologist Eric Hoffer said, "In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." To achieve our aim of radically transforming education, we must be open to new ways of thinking, learning, and teaching.
I invite all members of our diverse ASCD community to engage in this common purpose of transforming the education system. Let us be bold risk-takers. Let us be creative and collaborative and make meaningful history by providing the ultimate in learning experiences for all students in all schools. Tomorrow's change is required today. The call to action is urgent. The world's children deserve it, and our future demands it.