Schools for the 21st Century: The Fight Against the Standardization of Education and for the Promotion of Variety in Curriculum, Assessment, and Instruction

It is hard to predict the changes we should make in family life, business, and schooling in order to adapt to the environments that will surely occur as a function of changes in our economic systems and technology. Side effects and unanticipated consequences abound when a society undergoes major change. Nobody knew in advance that the automobile would change American courting practices. Few understood that television and women entering the labor market would destroy the rich social life that characterized the United States before the Second World War (Putnam, 2000). Not many futurists predicted that Facebook, Twitter, and smartphones would foment revolution, as they recently have done. The world we all face may be characterized as a VUCA world (Johansen, 2007), one that is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. Instability in many aspects of life may have been the most profound outcome of the industrial age, compared to the relative stability of the agrarian age that preceded it. But in this postindustrial age, I think we can expect an even sharper increase in life-changing events. How does one prepare for such instability?