Remember that moment when Mulan figures out how to climb the pole? To do it, she has to change the way she views the two weights. What seems at first to be a problem (‘How do I carry these weights with me as I climb?’) turns out to be an opportunity (‘I can use these weights to help me climb!’).
We face a similar situation today with respect to schools. Things that seem to be problems — declining enrollments, fixed building costs, flat test scores, an increasingly mobile work force, panic over COVID-19 — can, if we view them differently, spur us to rethink how we do things. But like Mulan, we’ll have to let go of some preconceptions.
Pioneering education researcher Alan Kay used to say that ‘a change of perspective is worth 80 IQ points’. In our case, it could be worth thousands of dollars per student per year — which is what we could save if we stop tinkering with ways to throw more money at yesterday’s problems, and focus instead on exploiting today’s opportunities.
