Innovation

“Innovation” is an overused word. Most companies, most executives and many brands like to self-congratulate themselves with it. Still, even if we are tired of hearing a word, the idea of behind it may be useful for us.  Innovation has different definitions. Some concentrate on the “newness” of what it brings, while others concentrate on the reuse of existing resources in different ways. I will try to find a useful definition with a few imagined scenarios.

1. Necessity:  Keeping up with changed reality:
   A new problem/opportunity occurs, and a solution is found within existing knowledge. For example, the depletion of the Ozone layer, together with heightened awareness of skin cancer create a concern among people about being exposed to sun radiation. Existing knowledge can be used to create sun-blocking lotions. Somebody does it as an innovation.
2. Opportunity:  Using changed knowledge:
   A problem/opportunity existed for a long time. New knowledge appears that can be applied to address the problem/opportunity. For example, people have been sewing for millennia. In the early 19^th century, the industrial revolution starts allowing accurately repeated motion of fine machinery. The sewing machine appears as an innovation.
3. Divine inspiration:
   A problem/opportunity existed for a long time, no new knowledge was introduced recently, and suddenly someone thinks of a solution. For example:… I don’t have an example. This doesn’t happen often, if at all.

Which one(s) do we see happen in Education?

1. Keeping up? Hardly. We moved from Industrial, to modern, to post-modern, and the mass schooling system is still extremely similar to how it was at its initial phases.  My understanding is that this is very much the case also in most of the countries that implemented reforms in their education systems.  The basic concepts of school, classroom, teacher as a conveyer of information, bare knowledge testing as the means to ensure the information was conveyed, assumptions about the importance of one subject over another, the very concept of "subject," ...  All these and more are almost unchanged.
2. Using changed knowledge? Hardly. We now have much more advanced technology than in the early 19^th century.  Yet we are only starting to use computers, and almost exclusively to replace pen and paper while the pupils are performing the same tasks they performed 150 years ago.  We have a better understanding of the brain, but we use it almost exclusively to design drugs to quiet the pupils down, so they can sit in their chairs quietly just as they were supposed to 150 years ago.
3. Divine inspiration?  Not lately.

How do we "achieve" this almost-perfect lack of innovation?
Innovation - almost by definition - seldom comes from the established center. It shrivels up and dies in an environment of micromanagement.  The direct antidote is to allow people in the system the necessary self-rule to try new things.  To innovate.  With that autonomy must come tolerance for errors, since with trying new things comes the risk of failure.

The necessity is great - reality has changed a lot since the last major changes in education.  And it keeps changing very quickly.
The opportunity is great - technology, science, affluence are at their peak.  And at least technology and science seem to keep progressing fast.

If (much) more autonomy is exercised by individuals, and if temporary failure is tolerated, we can generate a steady flow of innovation.  For the benefit of the pupils, the system and society.