Daniel Pink's Whole New Mind

Daniel Pink has offered some very interesting ideas about job creativity, the future job market and our educational system. My first impression of Daniel Pink's ideas are that they fall into the realm of self help, i.e. Tony Robbins. I basically agree with all of his ideas. He makes the statement that we should not be afraid to be creative in our job. He elaborates by using the quote, "It is better to ask forgiveness than permission." His point is that if we are unhappy at our jobs we should find a way to continue to do our job in a way that matches our personality. He is adamant that it is worth the risk of alienating yourself with your boss to find happiness in your job. After trying your job, "your way," if your personality prevents you from doing your job then find another one. The premise of this advice is that if you are unhappy you'll be doing a bad job anyway and will probably get fired or quit regardless so why not take a chance before arriving at the end of the road. Another statement he made discusses the future job market. He begs us to ask three questions. The first question is can someone else do it cheaper? The second question is can a computer do it faster? The last question asks does what you do satisfy the the demands of an abundant age? I believe these are questions that every high school guidance counselor should discuss with seniors before they leave for college. These young people are about to enter college and make decisions that they will have to live with for the rest of their life. Probably the biggest of these decisions is what will a student major in. I think too much is put into what do I find interesting. I think that it is also important for young people to think about what do I like that I can find a job in. In other words, what are the careers with the best job markets? I have known countless people who have gone to school gotten their bachelors then end up having to go back and pursue another degree. The last topic Mr. Pink discusses is the structure of our educational system. He says that our educational focus is slanted too much toward logic and not enough on creative type things. I don't necessarily agree with him on this. I teach at a school of about 1850 students. Our school offers a variety of extracurricular type electives such as guitar, chorus, a variety of band classes, horticulture, JROTC, Foreign Languages, and Creative Writing just to name a few. My school also offers various clubs from FFA, FBLA, FCA all the way to the Go Club. The Go Club is a club for board game enthusiasts. A full gamut of athletic opportunities also can be found at my school. I think all of these extracurricular and elective opportunities allow for those of us who are more right brain oriented to be successful. I am currently teaching math. Math is a very logical subject. You follow certain procedures and complete steps and you arrive at an answer. This is the nature of the subject. When I taught social sciences it lended itself more naturally to storytelling. I think Mr. Pink needs to investigate his views on our educational system more thoroughly and then present his opinion. I listened to Mr. Pink on You Tube and I also read the article discussing his thoughts.