School leaders and politicians often justify education policies, curriculum, and pedagogical practices by claiming that they are \u201cpreparing students for the real world.\u201d Upon hearing this magic incantation, I brace myself for their depiction of the \u201creal world.\u201d Typically, they err in two ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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- The real world is deeply unpleasant.
<\/strong>An example might be, \u201cFifth grade needs to be miserable because you will not believe how awful sixth grade is.\u201d Alfie Kohn calls this BGUTI<\/em>, the Better Get Used to It curriculum<\/em>.\u00a0(Kohn, 2006)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n- \n
- The person speaking has no idea whatsoever happens in the real world.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
At best, this is rooted in nostalgia for a world that no longer exists. I get the sense that the speaker lives in a fantasy world where Mom and Dad wake up at 6 AM. Mom cooks breakfast. Dad dresses in a suit, tie, and fedora, kisses his wife on the forehead and grabs the lunch pail she prepared for him to eat at the office. This nostalgia manifests itself in the confusion between testing and teaching or teachers saying things like, \u201cI\u2019m going to grade your handwritten geometry notebook because college professors do not allow laptops and penmanship matters.\u201d \u201cYou must wear a uniform that makes you look like an extra in a Dickens film because when you get that job on Wall Street\u2026\u201d[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEducation is not preparation for life; education is life itself. Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.\u201d <\/em>(Dewey, 1897)<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe calls for real world preparation tend to diminish learning in several important ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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- Vocational preparation is prized over the value of learning for its own sake.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- The curriculum is narrowed to teach primarily that which is tested on standardized tests.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Extrinsic motivation is favored.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Children are too often expected to solve intractable problems perplexing adult experts, such as climate change or hunger.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Learning is equated with labor and viewed as unnatural.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- The calls for real world learning disrespect the wonder and whimsy of childhood.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Generations of teachers and parents see merit in seven-year-olds building dinosaurs out of cereal boxes. The creativity, design, fantasy play, and language development involved in such a project is consistent with timeless ideals of childhood. First graders don\u2019t need to be cleaning the local stream in order engage in real world learning. When you are seven, that cardboard dinosaur play is<\/em> the real world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Twenty Things<\/em> teaches us that if we value cardboard dinosaurs, but today\u2019s children have access to technology that allows children to make a dinosaur they program to sing, dance, or send a text message to Grandma, that experience is enriched and wholly consistent with being a child in the real world of today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blast Off!<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Theo is my five-year-old grandson. He lives in China which limits our time together especially over the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. As Theo completed preschool, he decided that he would like to give a gift to each of his twenty-six classmates. That was a lovely sentiment demonstrating his generosity and empathy. Theo could have asked his parents to buy something for each of the kids, but he had a better idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Young Theo opened Tinkercad on his iPad and proceded to design 3-Dimensional rockets. Then he downloaded his design plans to the low-cost 3D printer his other grandfather sent him. After a bit of prototyping and tinkering, Theo manufactured dozens of original plastic rockets of his own design to give as gifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/stager.tv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Theo-manufactures-rockets-914x1024.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe kids loved getting one of Theo\u2019s rockets even though they look like rockets invented by a preschooler. Perhaps the kids appreciated the rocket more than a polished store-bought toy because their peer made it for them. It was an authentic gift \u2013 personal, modern, fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A decade ago, very few adults would have had the engineering expertise or access to the technological hardware required to make a class set of rockets, regardless of their aesthetics. Several years ago, schools may have purchased a 3D printer and taught kids much older than five how to use it. Even in those pioneering schools, many kids just 3D print roughly identical Yoda keychains from a file they found on the Internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, my grandson has his own 3D printer at home. He can design objects of his imagination in CAD software on his iPad. Theo is an engineer, designer, and inventor of 3D toys all before he can read, write, or be taught arithmetic. He can ask one of a half dozen devices in his home, \u201cHow do giraffes sleep?\u201d and they will respond, just as Papert predicted in 1993. (Papert, 1993) One must wonder if educators realize what is about to hit them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My fear is that when tiny DaVinci\u2019s like Theo enter school, they will suffer the fate described by Papert during a late 1980s conversation with Paulo Freire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s an exaggeration, but that there\u2019s a lot of truth in saying that when you go to school, the trauma is that you must stop learning and you must now accept being taught.\u201d <\/em>(TV PUC S\u00e3o Paulo, 1980s)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
When children arrive at school with specific expertise, interests, curiosity, talents, and other gifts, it is incumbent upon educators to build upon those blessings and help them develop well beyond what a child might have achieved on her own. More importantly, school has an obligation to introduce children to things they don\u2019t yet know they love. Democratizing access to experience, expertise, and materials is school\u2019s highest calling. In an age of engineering and fabricating your own toys at five, kids enter school with a different relationship to knowledge construction and sense of themselves as learners than in previous eras. Schools that fail to acknowledge the world of children and adjust accordingly, do so at considerable peril.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My daughter, Theo\u2019s aunt, is a prime example of the real world in 2021. Of our three adult children, she is the only one who has been fully employed with a salary, health insurance, and an apartment since the day she graduated college with a degree in Art. Even Barack Obama used to make cheap shots at the expense of those pursuing art degrees. It\u2019s the low-hanging fruit for those who view education in transactional terms. After eight years or so in the workplace, my daughter moved to a new state and earned an MFA in Textiles from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She can draw, animate, weave, sew, crochet, knit, edit video, code, write, speak, teach, cook, support herself, and design a dress that walked New York Fashion Week. She also got a new job recently. The job allows her to live anywhere and has no office to report to \u2013 ever. Her new position comes with unlimited vacation time. Let that roll around in your head for a moment. Unlimited vacation time for a career entirely based on remote work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If schools were sincere in preparing Theo for the real world, how would the educational process be designed to reflect the world of his aunt and a growing number of others in careers their guidance counselors never could have imagined \u2013 solving problems their teachers never taught them to solve?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nReferences<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dewey, J. (1897). My pedagogic creed<\/em>. EL Kellogg & Company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kohn, A. (2006). The homework myth: Why our kids get too much of a bad thing<\/em>. Da Capo Lifelong Books. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nguyen, L., & Jeng, M. (2021, August 2, 2021). A Wall Street Dressing Down: Always. Be. Casual. The New York Times<\/em>. https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/08\/02\/business\/wall-street-casual.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Papert, S. (1993). Obsolete skill set: the 3Rs; literacy and letteracy in the media ages. Wired<\/em>, 1.2<\/em>(May\/June), 52. http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wired\/archive\/1.02\/1.2_papert.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
TV PUC S\u00e3o Paulo. (1980s). Freire and Papert<\/em> https:\/\/vimeo.com\/20497106<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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- The person speaking has no idea whatsoever happens in the real world.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n