Before every child is left behind: How epistemic games can solve the coming crisis in education

Shaffer, D. W., & Gee, J. P. (2005). Before every child is left behind: How epistemic games can solve the coming crisis in education (WCER Working Paper No. 2005-7): University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin Center for Education Research. http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/publications/workingPapers/Working_Paper_No_2005_7.pdf

In his recent bestseller, The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman (2005) argues that the United States is facing a looming crisis–a crisis with the potential to wreck havoc on the old and the young, on rich and poor alike. Freedman talks about this new crisis mostly in terms of foreign policy and global economics–what nation states, governments, businesses, and workers must do to adapt to the changing world at the beginning of the 21st century.

But this crisis is not just a crisis of economics or politics. At its core, this is a crisis in education–a crisis in education unlike any we’e seen before. The coming crisis is a crisis of learning, and it is a crisis that we will have to face in school, at home, in workplaces, and in communities.

The coming crisis is this: Young people in the United States today are being prepared–in school and at home–for ‘commodity jobs’ in a world that will, very soon, reward only people who can do ‘innovative work’ and punish those who can’t.