Rethinking the Old Rationale

This was in Sunday's NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html

When I hear teachers making pedagogical choices for how students should show mastery of material based on "but they'll be asked to do it this way in college (or high school ) -I am getting them ready now" it is articles like this that make me question the value of that kind of decision making. It used to be that there was some ethics in that - they needed to learn to jump through the hoops bc a degree was some kind of guaranteed ticket to a good job- but that is just not the case now in more and more fields ! It is putting a lot of precious eggs into a very old basket riddled with holes - wouldn't it be best to protect each egg according to its unique size and shape ?

The quote from Google that GPA and test scores mean absolutely nothing to them- they don't predict anything and are ignored in hiring- means we may be not looking far enough into their futures when we are saying that education is to make a child college -ready.

Student need a core base of knowledge but there is just not a single universal canon anymore. We as teachers are kidding ourselves if we think there is and there probably never was- just a few class markers if anything. Students need to be skilled and flexible for their futures. We need to give them the opportunity for lasting learning -not the kind that goes away after the test.. That kind of game is just not worth playing anymore.