Reframing Education: The “App” Generation

Howard Gardner is a leading thinker about education and human development and has studied and written extensively about intelligence, creativity, leadership, and professional ethics. In his talk at Nesta last month he looked at how young people today differ from those of earlier decades with particular attention to the effect of the digital landscape.

He highlighted our focus on success and the importance placed on being top of the class or having more friends on Facebook… Worryingly, research suggests that, even with freely accessible, content-rich platforms, we are becoming more and more risk adverse. He questioned how we will continue to innovate, discover, transform and lead when we await reassurance from our peers and colleagues before stepping outside of the box. The pressures from wider society leave little room for wandering or wondering and creatively solving problems as a child.

Children have an App for everything; their programmed lives crave the connected, instantaneous functionality of this packaged experience. They now see life as a series of apps with a modular system that stretches beyond their phones and tablets into their broader plans for the future.

With progress measured by test scores and results, children and schools often focus on a stripped down learning experience. But with children having an increasing amount of screen time per day, we have a fantastic opportunity to develop quality, stimulating and creative media that uses this time constructively.

We should be looking at ways to use the arts to actively engage children in their learning whilst harnessing the increasingly popular digital platforms that both schools and parents are investing in.