The Laboratory Our Schools Are Missing
The Laboratory Our Schools Are Missing
I’ve been rereading Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith’s Most Likely to Succeed, and one section stopped me in my tracks.
Wagner identifies seven “survival skills” that young people will need to thrive in a rapidly changing world: critical thinking and problem-solving, collaboration and leadership, agility and adaptability, initiative and entrepreneurship, effective communication, accessing and analyzing information, and curiosity and imagination.
What struck me wasn’t simply that initiative and entrepreneurship made the list. It was that entrepreneurship develops nearly every other skill on the list as well.
And that raises an important question for schools: are we simply adding more academic programs, or are we intentionally preparing students to succeed in the Innovation Era?
This doesn’t mean academic content no longer matters. Of course it does. But increasingly, the differentiator will be whether students can actually do something with what they know. Can they solve an unfamiliar problem? Can they collaborate with people who think differently? Can they recognize an opportunity and take action without someone telling them exactly what to do?
This is where entrepreneurship becomes incredibly powerful.
-Give students a real problem and ask them to create a solution, and they have to think critically.
-Put them on a team and ask them to launch something, and they have to collaborate and lead.
-Put their idea in front of an actual customer, and they have to communicate.
-When the customer doesn’t buy it, they have to adapt.
-When no teacher is standing beside them with step-by-step instructions, they have to exercise initiative.
That is the entrepreneurial mindset in action.
And this is exactly why I believe a student-run business should sit at the center of a robust entrepreneurship program. The business is not the end goal; it is the laboratory.
And in this laboratory space, the learning leads to doing. Not just taking notes and studying for an exam but actually acting on the mindset itself. This is a move away from learning for the sole sake of knowledge and a move toward learning for the sake of action.
The question itself begins to change. It moves from, “What does my teacher want me to know?” to, “What problem needs to be solved, and what can I do about it?”
Ultimately, the defining characteristic of an innovative school will not be how many additional programs it offers. It will be the kind of people its students are becoming.
Can they solve problems? Can they communicate? Can they collaborate? Can they adapt? Can they take initiative? Can they create something of value for someone else?
Those skills are not extras anymore–they are becoming central to what it means to be prepared for the future. That is why entrepreneurship belongs much closer to the center of the modern school experience—we don’t need another classroom where students simply learn about the future. We need laboratories where they can begin practicing for it.