EDUCATION:To face the economic challenges ahead, Ireland needs to get creative when it comes to education, according to two recent graduates who have set up the Irish Undergraduates Awards to encourage original thought
IN THE words of the greatest teacher I ever had: "You won't think you're way to an Irish education, so stop thinking and start learning." That one sentence accurately captures one of the greatest challenges facing our society and economy. At the very point in our history when we need our education system to move our students into critical-thinking mode, we're stuck in the old neutral-learning mode. We need to become an innovation nation or a knowledge economy. Yet almost our entire education system undermines the very attribute most needed over the coming decades for innovation to take place: creativity.
The creation of new knowledge usually requires an individual to question existing or accepted knowledge. Many of the greatest discoveries in science and technology follow this basic pattern. That pattern requires a person to accept the possibility of being wrong. Such possibilities, however, are largely unacceptable during primary and secondary education. By 18 years of age, most students are hostage to a belief set antithetical to innovation yet entirely necessary for continued educational progression in this country: it's wrong to be wrong.
This belief set is at complete odds with the type of society and economy we now need. We desperately need to create a generation of young thinkers who are prepared to be wrong. Yet, we remain tied to a system of education that does the opposite. We are training our young people to ask for the answers to every question, as opposed to training them to question every answer. Worse still, we richly reward passive acceptance of knowledge and seldom if ever celebrate the critical examination of that knowledge.
By the time most students enter third level, they are obsessed with asking a simple but profoundly illuminating question: "Will this be on the exam?" Knowledge has come to be seen merely as a means of getting ahead and not as something that is pursued for more fundamental reasons. In short, the modus operandi of most undergraduates is the more you know, the further you'll get. When it should be: the more you think, the further you'll get. The more Ireland thinks, the further we'll get.
Learning isn't Ireland's problem. Thinking is our problem. It's difficult to blame undergraduates when they are the products of an education system whose guiding maxim is embodied in the Leaving Certificate. That maxim may have ushered this country's workforce in the right direction for decades, but the world has changed and Ireland must change with it. It's no longer wrong to be wrong. It's right to be wrong. That may sound counterintuitive, but for creativity to flourish this new motto must be sown across primary and secondary level, and encouraged most deeply at third and fourth level.
Confused? Look at it this way: On the day Leaving Certificate results are released, we still collectively lavish our highest achievers with words such as "genius". These high achievers should be congratulated, but remember: real geniuses are most often those who create new knowledge and seldom, if ever, those who recreate existing knowledge. Yet too often we elevate those who parrot back answers to the position of genius and, because creativity is neither properly recognised nor actively fostered, the true creative capacities of most young people remain largely untapped and undeveloped.
It's a regrettable reality considering many of our largest and most innovative employers have been crying out for the fostering of creativity for years. But crying alone it seems will not change reality. Many of our potentially brightest prospects are drawn in increasing numbers to courses that lead students into areas of employment where mastering existing knowledge is the measure of success, not a mastering the creation of new knowledge. At a time when our nation needs boffins, we remain obsessed with barristers and the like. Why? Because our entire education system is geared towards rewarding those who know, and penalising those who think.
I hate to say it, but my teacher was right. Within the current education system, thinking is a fool's game. Students don't think their way to third level, they learn their way there. To then expect them to flick the creativity on-button is naive.
Apparently, education has been changing. But the changes that have been cosmetic - they don't go far enough in fostering creativity or original thought. For example, where creativity is encouraged at second level in the sciences it's usually extra-curricular. That needs to change, especially given Ireland's need for a pipeline of talented thinkers, not of learned people. To achieve that end we need more fundamental change at all levels. Change that is less concerned with increasing the quantity of graduates entering third and fourth level and more concerned with increasing the quality of those individuals consistent with the needs of a changing economic and social reality.
To badly paraphrase the worldly Sarah Palin, you can put lipstick on a dead tiger, but it's still a dead tiger. Enough lipstick. The future requires an altogether different and more creative animal.
Paddy Cosgrave and Oisin Hanrahan are the founders of the Irish Undergraduates Awards. The awards will encourage, recognise and celebrate undergraduate academic creativity and original thought. They will be launched on October 20th. See www.iuawards.ie or contact patrick@iuawards.ie
