Why Educating Young People Might Be Misguided, But Well-Intentioned

When current secondary school students enter the job market, it is likely that many of them will be starting jobs with titles we have never heard before. Ten years ago few people would have heard of social media management.

Countries that will rank as being the most innovative, will be those that have invested in developing their creative literacy.

For the past five years, I have been developing a curriculum that helps improve creative literacy. I have had a love affair with teaching young people about innovation and society, but this year my belief in this approach to education has been vigorously challenged.

Is investing in young people’s creative literacy the best leverage point for improving innovation capacity?

The answer to that question is probably somewhere between yes and no and investing in young people can never be a bad idea. Yet, a recent experience has forced me to reconsider my belief that investing in young people may as a strategic approach. It seems that we need to invest in adults and young people.

I was having a conversation with a potential TEDx speaker who shared that she loved how TEDxPortofSpain also included a young crowd. She argued that with so many young people attending our conference, our future seems bright. It is the sort of affirmation that every TEDx organizer wants to hear, but was she right?

I usually have a fear that when too many people around you agree with you, chances are you have found yourself in a group that is engaged in self-affirming navel gazing? It wasn’t until a few days later that I thought maybe I was participating in a sort of collective folly.

Then, I found myself sitting with a potential sponsor, explaining TED and TEDx. I have always known that we would need to educate some people about TED and TEDx, but the number of people who sit at senior Human Resource, Communication, or Marketing positions who have never heard of TED still surprises me. Six years into hosting TEDxPortofSpain, and these conversations make me feel like we have done so little to penetrate the market. I am still surprised to learn that there are people in key decision-making positions who do not know, understand, or have an interest in ideas worth spreading. They have never heard of TED. It is scary to me that these folks have never come across a single TEDTalk they find interesting. Then it struck me.

There was an entire generation of individuals sitting in influential positions, who have not been taught how to think. It was in that moment that I had my reality revisited. These people have not been taught to ask critical questions.

They have not been taught to question the way things are and have always been. So although it makes us feel good to work with youth and teach them all about innovation and society, is that the most useful place for this kind of education?

I teach an annual workshop on innovation and society called The B Studio Project, and I could not help but wonder if this kind of workshop could have a greater impact if they were taught to a different audience.

It is hard to argue that educating young people is a bad idea, but it comes with an extended incubation period. It might be twenty to thirty years before any of these young people are in positions where they can make decisions that impact our country.

This is not to say we should stop teaching young people about approaches to generating innovation. What we need to do is to stop offloading our problems onto others and start owning them.

For the most immediate results, it is probably most useful to intervene with current middle and upper management folks. Intervening in the spaces where people are making decisions that will be affecting our society today. It is these folks who need to be introduced to innovation education and working groups.

We need to rethink the idea that educating our young people is the most useful societal intervention. We need to educate ourselves about what innovation for society should look like. We need to form task forces and working groups to provide strategic direction on how we might take an intentional approach towards addressing some of our most challenging problems.

Investing in young people is sexy, so corporate communications professionals will always find it attractive. It makes for excellent sound bites and press releases. As a long term strategy however, investing in youth is unquestionably a good idea.

In the short-term, if we are to move the needle on issues that matter, we would need a different approach. What if we took a similar approach and invested in groups within the public and private sector? We need to educate our entire decision-making workforce on approaches and processes to generating innovation for society.

I began working with young people because I was annoyed that I did not learn about innovation and society until I did a Masters degree. It made little sense to me that we waited that long to teach folks about innovation.

Although this is still true, in my zeal to educate young people earlier in life, I missed the opportunity to educate all those who had come before and did not have that exposure.

Reality Revisited is the theme for this year’s TEDxPortofSpain conference and when you begin to question your current assumptions, no matter how simple, they can profoundly change the way you work in the world.

Keita Demming
TEDxPortofSpain Licensee