“For too long, we have educated people for a world that no longer exists.”
Russell Ackoff

A leader in systems thinking, Russell Ackoff has been called the “father of operations research.” He was a Wharton professor from 1964 to 1986 who continued to lecture and speak until his death at age 90 on October 29, 2009.

One of the areas he wrote and spoke about was education from kindergarten through college. In 2008 he teamed with Daniel Greenberg to write a book, Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track. In it, they wrote, “Mass education was explicitly developed to mold naturally unruly children into compliant, obedient young people. Inspired by the Industrial Revolution, schools were, and still are, designed and operated as much like factories as possible. Incoming students are treated as raw materials to be processed into saleable products. Creativity is actively suppressed, and in most schools conformity—which is anathema to creativity—is valued instead.”

The Information Age is burdened by an antiquated education system and everybody—and all institutions—suffer as a result.

Democracy suffers from ignorant citizens who cannot think critically about the issues before them, who are easily manipulated by lies and distortions, and who weaken government by allowing self-serving special interests to dictate the agenda. That’s a failure of our education system.

Business suffers from ignorant employees who cannot solve a problem or come up with a creative idea or act independently without clear direction. Too many even need remedial help in reading and math. That’s a failure of our education system.

In their book, Ackoff and Greenberg skewer a system that manages to expand employment, waste money, increase testing without measuring much that is important, and fail to prepare students to be intelligent, productive adults. As systems thinkers have taught us, that’s a failure of the system, not of the people working within the system.

Ackoff and Greenberg identify the characteristics of the ideal school environment for young people to be educated in:

• Learning takes place through self-motivation and self-regulations.
• Equal status is given to all interests.
• The output of learners is judged through self-evaluation, a concept that includes the freedom to seek outside feedback.
• Learning groups form based on common interests.
• No artificial distinction is drawn between learners and teachers.
• All members of the learning community participate fully in regulating its activities.

None of these is a characteristic of our existing system. None of these is possible in our existing system, which means the system must change to educate people for the world that now exists.

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