This morning I awoke to the music my wife was listening to whilst running on the treadmill. It was Irene Cara singing her iconic song “Fame.” A song about kids with big dreams; dreams of being famous entertainers. The song goes like this:
I’m gonna live forever
I’m gonna learn how to fly high
I feel it coming together
I’m gonna make it to heaven
Light up the sky like a flame
I’m gonna live forever
Baby remember my name
The dream the kids in this story are pursuing is fame. The school they attend is kind of a Julliard, but for street kids. Julliard, by the way, is perhaps the most prestigious music school in the world. Julliard’s alumni have won [1980-2012] 105 Grammys, 62 Tonys, 47 Emmys, 24 Academy Awards, and 16 Pulitzer Prizes. Julliard’s mission is to provide the “highest quality” education to musicians, dancers, and performers. Julliard is one of the most difficult schools to get into. Their applicants, before applying, must already be excellent in what they do. In fact, according to one admission officer “applicants must be better than every other amateur artist, in their field, in the world.” Needless to say, the rigor and intensity of admission auditions at Julliard are the stuff of legends.
Earlier this week a parent asked about “excellence in education.” The question took me back four years to a strategic planning session. We had about forty members of the ASB community in a room debating questions like.
- What does excellence in education in the 21st century mean?
- Can excellence be taught and learned?
- How is excellence measured in schools in the 21st century?
- And most importantly for a school like ASB: Do ASB’s different stakeholders (teachers, parents and students-from over 52 countries) agree on a definition of ‘excellence’ in the 21st century?
Why is this last question the most important? Because if the answer is, “No” – Well, then we have a problem.
According to one of Seth Godin’s blog posts, Kodak and Polaroid lost their global monopolies because they misunderstood the concept of excellence as it related to photography at the end of the 20th century. These two mega-corporations thought the quality or excellence their customers wanted was the ability to take “museum-grade” photographs. However, what the world really wanted was “…the ability to take and share billions of photos at vanishingly small cost, not museum-quality.”
Reflecting on Kodak and Polaroid service and/or product providers should be seriously nudged to ask their customers for more clarity on what they want. Providers should be delving into how the customer defines ‘quality’ and ‘excellence’ of the product. Right? Not according to Steve Jobs. Jobs was infamous for saying, “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” However, I’m not sure we can apply Jobs’ point of view to education…
Living and working in Mumbai, a city with 39 international schools, we know that the definitions of what is ‘excellence in education’ will be all over the place; creating a massive definitional spectrum. It’s safe to say my team and I have a very strong and commonly agreed upon understanding of a definition. So, what is it? If you, the reader, were pressed to offer only one indicator or measure of what you consider ‘excellent education’ for the 21st century, what would it be?