Some Wagner Quotes

Below are some quotes that I have collected from Wagner's The Global Achievement Gap. As you can infer from his bio and seeing his videos, he is not puffy like some academics. His written language is down-to-earth, clear, yet determined to make his case.

"In today's highly competitive global "knowledge economy," students need new skills for college, careers, and citizenship. The failure to give all students these new skills leaves today's youth-and our country-at an alarming competitive disadvantage. Schools haven't changed; the world has. And so our schools are not failing. Rather, they are obsolete-even the ones that score the best on standardized tests."

"The "problem," simply stated, is that the future of our economy, the strength of our democracy, and perhaps even the health of the planet's ecosystems depend on educating future generations in ways very different from how many of us were schooled."

"The global achievement gap remains invisible to most of us-in part, because it is fueled by fundamental economic, social, political, and technological changes that have taken place so rapidly over the last two decades that they seem more like static in people's lives than like tangible forces that are shaping our future. But these changes are powerful, and until we understand them and rethink what young people need to know in the twenty-first century and how they are best taught, our future as a country remains uncertain."

"I have observed that the longer our children are in school, the less curious they become. Effective communication, curiosity, and critical-thinking skills, as we will see, are much more than just the traditional desirable outcomes of a liberal arts education. They are essential competencies and habits of mind for life in the twenty-first century."

"Corporate CEO most values asking good questions; his child gets into trouble at school for asking the teacher a question. The problem of students getting into trouble for challenging something a teacher says is not new to me, but I found this juxtaposition especially jarring."

"Taking issues and situations and problems and going to root components; understanding how the problem evolved-looking at it from a systemic perspective and not accepting things at face value. It also means being curious about why things are the way they are and being able to think about why something is important. Indeed, Ms. Neal herself went on with a list of questions: What do I really need to understand about this; what is the history; what are other people thinking about this; how does that all come together; what frames and models can we use to understand this from a variety of different angles and then come up with something different?"

(about the schools in Singapore which are called Thinking Schools. Singapore aims to become a Learning Nation)
"Thinking Schools will be learning organizations in every sense, constantly challenging assumptions, and seeking better ways of doing things through participation, creativity and innovation. Thinking Schools will be the cradle of thinking students as well as thinking adults and this spirit of learning should accompany our students even after they leave school. A Learning Nation envisions a national culture and social environment that promotes lifelong learning in our people. The capacity of Singaporeans to continually learn, both for professional development and for personal enrichment, will determine our collective tolerance for change."