Last week, I screened a new documentary, “Most Likely to Succeed,” at the Columbus Museum of Art.

This screening was the culmination of several months of book study meetings about the book of the same title by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith. These group discussions were populated by school superintendents, leaders in education and other educators like myself.

Our mission? To discuss how teaching and learning might improve in K12 schools, what the test environment has wrought and what career readiness means in contemporary society. The book emphasized the differences between credentials and competence and challenged the necessity of a college degree along the way. It also stressed the importance of preparing kids for life vs tests and the price we as a society are paying for trying to change the nation’s schools incrementally rather than radically.

It was exciting, stimulating and beautifully put together.

The documentary features the story and approach of one particular school, High Tech High, in San Diego, California.

The school reminded me a lot of our very own Metro School here in Columbus.

 
Ohio State’s colleges of Arts and Science, Education and Human Ecology, and Engineering contribute to Metro School’s focus on problem-based learning. High Tech High goes even further and has eliminated textbooks and class periods. Instead, they integrate all subjects together.

Often when I meet the author of books like this, I am disappointed. Not so this time! Tony Wagner is as engaging in person as he is in writing. I don’t agree with all his ideas, particularly in terms of colleges of education and teacher prep, but he has some important ideas that we should all pay attention to.

I’d like to consider some of them at the collegiate level as well as in K12. To that end, I will pursue getting that documentary to show here on campus as well.

In the meantime, you might want to take a peek at his book!

The first time I read a book by Edward O. Wilson, I was as an undergraduate student.

Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize author, was already a world renowned biologist at the time. I was interested in animal behavior and he was interested in ants.

Today, Wilson is still considered one of the 20^th century’s greatest biologists and he is still enamored with ants.

His most recent book, The Meaning of Human Existence, however, is a collection of essays that try to answer the following questions:

• Why are we, as humans, the way we are?
• And, what does it matter?

He explores, with wonder, the dominance of microbes, humans’ genetically-based tension of individual selfishness vs group (or tribal) altruism, religion, the possibility of life on other planets and the concept of free will.

But, the reason I recommend this collection of essays, which is a National Book Award finalist, is because of Wilson’s repeated arguments supporting the role of the humanities in this century.

 
If the campus rumor is correct, Ohio State will be reexamining its general education curricular requirements next year. If so, it would be well to consider Wilson’s science vs humanities observations. He believes that scientific discoveries will peak and flatten out this century, but that the humanities will expand beyond everything that history has yet given us. He also believes this will be to the betterment of life for all of humankind.

Science, Wilson says, only explains why humans happened but the humanities explain what make humans who they are. Food for thought whether or not you agree with him.