The Future of Education | Forward Obsessed Ep. 1
In Episode 1 of Forward Obsessed, Founder of U of Next and Organizational Development Professor at the University of New Haven, Al Bhatt, sits down with Digital Surgeons Founder/CEO, Pete Sena, for an in-depth conversation about the future of education.
In their wide-ranging discussion, the two entrepreneurs touch on several interesting subjects, including leadership, reality, and the distinctions between science, art, and craft.
Quotes from Al to Remember
“Leadership is an art form. Unique self-expression does not belong in business school, does not belong in social psychology, but belongs in the humanities.”
“It is my experience that human beings, in general, do not ask for what they truly need because they don't even know that they need it yet.”
“I don't think (education) is broken at all. I think something's missing. That's a fundamentally different condition than something's broken.”
“It's fascinating, every research study you look at from corporate America, they tell you 'what we're looking for is teamwork, collaboration, et cetera,' and yet we still call it 'soft skills.' It's not soft skills. They're concrete skills. And the other thing – they're really not skills. They're states of being.”
“Learning – actual learning – not repeating what's been said. We have this mistaken notion of what thinking is in schools and in society in general. Everything that passes for thinking in schools is not thinking, it's thunking. That's a past tense of thinking and it's the retrieval of previously thought thoughts. That's what gets rewarded. Can you retrieve a thought that somebody else previously thought? If you do, you get an A. Actual thinking is sloppy, it's messy, it's like an artist working a thing because there's no blueprint for it.”
“Teamwork for me is a simple matter. It's about human relationships.”
“I would love to see a century where we have no more Steve Jobs. I would love to see a century where we have no more great men, with great ideas, doing great things.”
“It's not Elon Musk. There's a hundred people times a hundred underneath him. That's not a knock on him, but the work that there is for us to do (around the world), we just don't need big men with big ideas, big women with big ideas.”
“When words get used too much in sound bites, they start to lose their meaning because reality is created in language.”
“Design thinking is corrupted. This really valuable piece of human work is corrupted into this sound bite.”
