American students' tests scores leave something to be desired when compared globally and the country may find its position as a global leader in jeopardy.

David Edwards asks in his recent editorial for Wired, American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist, “Are Americans getting dumber?” and goes on to say “Americans need to learn how to discover.” 

Edwards lays out grim predictions for the next couple of decades which include an overpopulated planet and the need for a cultural and societal renaissance to evolve out of the approaching real-world changes to the way we all live. 

“Being dumb in the existing educational system is bad enough. Failing to create a new way of learning adapted to contemporary circumstances might be a national disaster. The good news is, some people are working on it,” Edwards writes.

With discovery environments popping up in art galleries, museums, and in the media and online, a culture of learning is springing up that doesn’t necessarily emphasize traditional learning as much as it does a process of interpretation, from how we process and use information to how it forms who we become, and beyond. 

The term “culture lab” has been put into place to describe a discovery environment with the purpose of answering difficult problems that society faces. 

Culture labs have become alternatives to answering tough questions through traditional means. Opposed to turning to the scientific approach, art and object installations explore the physiological and emotional roots to complex societal issues and “contemporary questions” through expression, and even design innovations. 

“Discovery has always provoked interest, but how one discovers may today interest us even more.” 

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Article by Jason Cunningham, EducationWorld Social Media Editor

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