I have slowly continued to read Seth Godin’s education manifesto called Stop Stealing Dreams. A couple of weeks ago I read article #50, called The Problem with Competence. Seth defines competent people as those that “have a predictable, reliable process for solving a particular set of problems.” He also says that competent people “resist change.” Seth’s conclusion is that competent people are not good for our future. He wants to find an “incompetent worker,” someone that will “break the rules and find me something no one else can.”
I understand Seth’s point, but I don’t think the answer is to hire an “incompetent worker.” I would rather hire a competent worker with a skill set that allows him/her to overcome resistance to change. My inspiration for this alternative comes from Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline. In the book, Peter defines a learning organization as one “where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and people are continually learning how to learn together.” An organization or individual that adopts these ideas will move to higher levels of achievement and respond to change with greater speed and success.
I propose that lifelong learners, those of us that never settle and consistently seek personal mastery, are competent people with the skills necessary to break the rules and find something that no one else can. However, I didn’t study to be a lifelong learner in school (well, at least not K-12). I learned some of this in college, but I learned most of what I know about personal mastery after making the decision to be a lifelong learner.
Is Seth proposing that we find a way to expose students to notions of lifelong learning and personal mastery during their K-12 years? Is he proposing that we force students to adopt these principles? Let me know what you think.