CI - What it takes to be successful

Educator John Taylor Gatto (below) profoundly reveals and reminds many truths about education. I am grateful that he says this so well. I think the attributes below are as good as any in defining success in CI.

I am grateful to my first exec boss in the CI space, Douglas Grindstaff, President of P&G Canada in the later 80's, who didn't fit the mold too well at P&G, whose marching orders were outstanding, permissive, creative: "Go and help your brands (businesses) and if you aren't do something else". That was/is the real definition of CI.


"THE CURRICULUM OF NECESSITY OR WHAT MUST AN EDUCATED PERSON KNOW?
http://bit.ly/7JDYk

By John Taylor Gatto

New York City Teacher of the Year, 1991

A few years back one of the schools at Harvard, perhaps the School of Government, issued some advice to its students on planning a career in the new international economy it believed was arriving. It warned sharply that academic classes and professional credentials would count for less and less when measured against real world training.

Ten qualities were offered as essential to successfully adapting to the rapidly changing world of work. See how many of those you think are regularly taught in the schools of your city or state:

1) The ability to define problems without a guide.
2) The ability to ask hard questions which challenge prevailing assumptions.
3) The ability to work in teams without guidance.
4) The ability to work absolutely alone.
5) The ability to persuade others that your course is the right one.
6) The ability to discuss issues and techniques in public with an eye to reaching
decisions about policy.
7) The ability to conceptualize and reorganize information into new patterns.
8) The ability to pull what you need quickly from masses of irrelevant data.
9) The ability to think inductively, deductively, and dialectically.
10) The ability to attack problems heuristically (common sense based on experience)"