I never expected a visit to Google to make me a better teacher, but it did. Google is the company known for its exceedingly fast Internet search engine. You type in a few words and in less than a second get 300,000 plus responses, many of which will probably answer your question. How do they do that? And what does this possibly have to do with education?
Google and other hi-tech corporations – Yahoo, Youtube and EBay - are successful because they have learned how to unleash creativity. That is what our schools should be doing, too. The time-honored method of teaching – lecture - requires brain surgery: opening students’ skulls and pouring information in (what psychologist and author, Carl Rogers, called the “mug and jug” theory of education.) Students study and are expected to recite what they have read, or what teachers have told them. Lecture is an efficient way to deliver concise information. However, the message is clear: “These 30 pages of text on the Civil War are all you need to know about the subject.”
Rather than diluting, distilling and spoon-feeding information, our job as educators should be to help students discover themselves, their talents and the exciting questions that need to be answered. We must encourage their creativity and their output. How can we do that?
I see a model for schools everywhere in what I observed at Google in Mountain View, California.
- Google workers are connected to the world through the Internet. They have access to all the information currently available to answer their questions.
- Google workers eat nutritious meals and snacks. You won’t find a soda dispenser on their campus. You will be able to savor three, free, healthy meals daily, as well as snacks.
- Google workers collaborate on their projects. They share ideas and make discoveries. They spend their mealtimes eating outside on a patio, playing with ideas and sparking one another’s imaginations.
- Google workers are free to stop “work” and play volleyball on a sand court, play an etude on the grand piano, take a walk or a swim.
- Google workers have both individual offices and quiet open areas where they can think and complete their projects.
And, my favorite:
- Google workers are expected to spend 20% of their time on the job pursuing an idea that interests them, chasing a sunbeam that may have no connection with their assigned work. At every turn they are rewarded for taking initiative.
If that’s not enough to motivate, Google corporate will financially support an innovator’s new ideas if he or she can convince two co-workers that the idea has merit.
Sounds like a dream, but I believe that students are capable of learning in a structured environment that offers comparable benefits.
Schools can offer every one of the Google incentives: Internet connections, brain food, time for play and collaboration, quiet space and community space, and time for individual projects.
I am not advocating the Summerhill School of the 60s in which students make all the decisions. I am advocating an environment in which students are given responsibility for their own learning and opportunities to explore their own interests - interests that will lead to a productive career and an inspired life.
The mission of educators is to break down the walls in our schools and provide opportunities for students to develop the inquisitiveness, collaborative framework, research skills, and confidence they need to meet the future.
One of Google’s mottos is: "work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun." Education should also be challenging, and the challenge should be fun. When we create an environment that fosters initiative, creativity, collaboration, and responsibility, we create life-long learners whose ideas may change the world.
