I’ve actually never Skyped before- in fact, it soulds like something one would try to avoid- but having just had the opportunity to Skype with Daniel H. Pink (author of A Whole New Mind), I’m sold. This technology has the potential of opening up great big opportunities for the delivery of the model, but that’s not the important thing. The important thing, though, is his message- the future belongs to those who can figure out how to be their “right-brain” selves- “creative, emphatic…thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn’t.”
One of the participants asked him what he would do if he were appointment principal of a school.. After acknowledging the difficulty of the job and his *complete* inability to meet the challenge, he suggested that we push beyond compliance with our students. Compliance is easy and lost of kids go that route- we need to structure their experiences so that compliance isn’t an option. I think the idea of structured non-compliance- of disallowing the option of gaming the system in order to get through- is where Critical Skills can has a great deal of strength. Problems without easy answers don’t allow for compliance because there’s nothing with which to comply.
What do you think?
The Critical Skills Classroom 
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I agree that we have to push beyond compliance. In fact, I remember someone calling compliance educational malpractice. Unfortunately our educational leaders have been encouraging compliance over critical skills and school districts are being rewarded for this compliance activity.
The big question in my mind is how do we move beyond the standards-based content high stakes testing for accountability? How can we quantify thinking skills as well as fact-based knowledge? What’s the score for thinking outside of the box, or even better, creating new boxes?