To answer Daniel's question about self-actualizing, the best way to motivate kids is to turn them into the teachers. And turn the teachers into advisors. It's a role shift that doesn't happen until graduate school for most people. But that's how I've seen the most exciting ideas and experiences happen for people in an academic environment. Learning becomes non-linear and progressive just as Dave wishes it were.

I'm a 24 year old “college student”. I use quotes because last semester I dropped most of my classes until I had the minimum required (6) to still play volleyball for my university (the main reason I am still in school).

I've since spent my free time building my own business which has had an incredible return in knowledge, fun, confidence, pride, and money.

English class became helpful only because I started writing papers with SEO in mind…

On a side note:
I grew up in Florida and remember a very inspired “Gifted” program in our (public) elementary schools. They picked particularly bright kids to meet with special own teacher once a week. In gifted we would focus on mind puzzles, build our own cities and companies, and play the stock market. I remember LOVING this class and learning a lot. I still remember deciding at that young age that I was going to be my own boss. Unfortunately, after elementary school the “gifted” program turned into the EXACT same curriculum as the other classes, only with more homework… sigh… my best years in school were pre-teen, but maybe without those i'd be stuck in life as lawyer working 12 hour days to perhaps make parter in a decade …shudders…

It sounds like the real question your asking is how do we measure what someone can do? In business, things that can be measured get done and are improved upon. The hard part is figuring a way to measure this. It gets easier if you are trying to measure what one or a few people can do and next to impossible at any kind of scale.

There is no doubt that our current system of measuring people based on academic/paper achievement sucks when measuring an individual, but it tends to work reasonably well to screen people down to the few people level.

The degrees serve as a measure of what someone has done. It can be inefficient at times, but how do you provide a general education to a specific career path and not get some inefficiency. What is irrelevant to you may be just what is needed for the 10 other people that got the same education. There were courses I was required to take that I thought were irrelevant, yet became relevant later in life.

University culture is very entrepreneurial. Most entrepreneurs need to mimic university culture in certain aspects. University culture has an innate curiosity and focuses on the learning of new things and the ways to learn new things . This is the basis of entrepreneurship. Silicon valley or any of the other entrepreneurial hot spots would not be so entrepreneurial if it were not for the universities. Where universities fall short is that they focus exclusively on the learning aspects. They rarely examine practical problems. When the do they often exclude the hard parts of the problem and focus on a very narrow part of the problem.

I think the point of education is to give a background so that we can better understand the world. It needs to be able to provide opportunity, not a guaranty of success. Our current education system is far from perfect, but I think it does a reasonable job of broadly categorizing people. Even past success, like your suggesting doesn't guaranty future success. Until we can better measure what someone can do, I think were better off making incremental improvements to the education system.

Again: The kid was disciplined! Unbelievable. And frightening.

Absolutely spot on commentary. It reminded me of an old (2006) TED Talk that pushed me over the edge in making the decisions I did during my college years. A story that might be worth sharing.

Sir Ken Robinson
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_scho…

When I first began attending college economics was my major. Studying business and micro/macro economics came naturally to me. During my time at State I realized that the academics where not very challenging. Facing the reality of spending a large amount of capitol for something that could be self taught bothered me a great deal. After watching this talk it became very clear to me college was only going to be a very expensive piece of paper with little to no value.

So against my parents “better judgement” I took a hard look at what the most difficult degree would be for me to get, and ultimately decided on Chinese. Additionally, once the switch had been completed all of my free time was spent on extracurricular activities and networking. I still studied business.

Sadly, most students I meet are not looking to attempt the challenging, or risk their GPAs for the unknown. Hands-down one of the smartest choice I have made.

That experience led me to develop some of the strongest relationships, travel the world, and still look myself in the mirror with a smile.

And for those people reading if you have not spent the time to drive out to some of these baltimore startup events, you are missing out.

There is huge room for improvement with regard to experiential entrepreneurship education. Additionally, demystifying the risk of entrepreneurship is key to breaking out of what's “normal.”

We will find and maintaining that balance between “checking the boxes” and providing for them a real world education. I will at the same time do all that I can to preserve and grow their already blossoming love of knowledge. It will be a challenge, but nearly nothing in this world motivates me more than helping to create my children's future and of course, going up against the pigeon-hole, assembly-line, least-common-denominator mentality in education. Whatever the future holds, it's going to be a fun ride (at least on our end:)

Thanks for pointing out that “Normal” isn't really normal at all here…

Design is an entirely different concept. It is purposeful and driven. You can't teach that, but you can mentor it. We need to create space for students/people/educators to foster it. That is what is lacking.

I love the work you are doing. Keep on….