High school education does not prepare students for the challenges that they will face in the world. Education needs to produce critical thinkers, designers, synthesizers, people who will make a difference, people who can generate new ideas. Most high school graduates nowadays go on to some kind of secondary education - over 85% of high school graduates. This kind of percentage of graduates requires a generation of critical thinkers, and the high school curriculum is not producing it.
High school curricula are simply too pedantic for today's society - students are running on the racetrack of their high school careers from test to work to test, without the chance for any creativity. They are learning to think inside the bounds of the box that is the high school curriculum. But the world is beautiful outside the box.
I want policymakers, lobbyists, and curriculum developers to think about the system of education. Where are our students going? Aren't they the leaders of tomorrow? Wouldn't you want to train the next creative mind?
A simple visualization that resembles a line drawing is all that is needed here. Anything fancier and the message is lost in the flashes of presentation. I want a comparison between two types of synthesis - one that is repetitive and one that is design-oriented. I want to bring in a familiar phrase ("think outside the box") and poke fun at stick-figure drawings by synthesizing them in a unique way to show their usefulness in the design of a complex system visualization.
Our students need to think outside the box.
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