Tony Wagner Quotes

The world doesn’t care what you know. What the world cares about is what you do with what you know.

An overarching goal of education should be to immerse students in the beauty and inspiration of their surrounding world.

Tony Wagner recently said, “There’s no competitive advantage today in knowing more than the person next to you. The world doesn’t care what you know. What the world cares about is what you can do with what you know.” And,

Now, adults need to be able to ask great questions, critically analyze information, form independent opinions, collaborate, and communicate effectively. These are the skills essential for both career and citizenship.

And so our schools are not failing.Rather they are obsolete

To have good prospects in life—to be most likely to succeed—young adults now need to be creative and innovative problem-solvers.

With well-designed pedagogy, we can empower kids with critical skills and help them turn passions into decisive life advantages. The role of education is no longer to teach content, but to help our children learn—in a world that rewards the innovative and punishes the formulaic.

most policy makers—and many school administrators—have absolutely no idea what kind of instruction is required to produce students who can think critically and creatively, communicate effectively, and collaborate versus merely score well on a test.

If college admissions officers are going to encourage kids to take the same AP math class, why not statistics? Almost every career (whether in business, nonprofits, academics, law, or medicine benefits from proficiency in statistics. Being an informed, responsible citizen requires a sound knowledge of statistics, as politicians, reporters, and bloggers all rely on "data" to justify positions. [p.98]

We asked him, if he could give advice to his younger self, what his formula for success would look like. He said that he no longer believes there is a set formula that will allow someone to succeed. He would simply recommend a “balance of hard work and socializing, with a little more emphasis on socializing. Knowing thyself.” Instead

Once again, the education model revolves around what makes life easy for test designers, not what’s best for kids.

Now, adults need to be able to ask great questions, critically analyze information, form independent opinions, collaborate, and communicate effectively.

U.S. education is failing, in large part, because of the misguided belief that it’s imperative to test on a massive scale.

education needs to help our youth discover their passions and purpose in life, develop the critical skills needed to be successful in pursuing their goals, be inspired on a daily basis to do their very best, and be active and informed citizens.

A recent report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation concluded that “The United States has made the least progress of the 40 nations/regions [studied] in improvement in international competitiveness and innovation capacity over the last decade.

Students who only know how to perform well in today’s education system—get good grades and test scores, and earn degrees—will no longer be those who are most likely to succeed. Thriving in the twenty-first century will require real competencies, far more than academic credentials.

While at Harvard University Graduate School of Education, Tony found himself to be a complete outlier. He was almost constantly at odds with the mainstream of education. He is the first to admit that a doctorate from Harvard is important largely because everyone thinks it’s important. Page 3

A 2013 study by the National Center on Education and the Economy found that “the mathematics that most enables students to be successful in college courses is not high school mathematics, but middle school mathematics, especially arithmetic, ratio, proportion, expressions and simple equations.

21st-Century Model Language Arts Skills Needed to Succeed Use sound vocabulary Read a wide variety of written materials (novels, poems, plays, essays, news) critically Communicate clearly across multiple media forms, with a range of styles Form and justify independent bold perspectives Ask thoughtful questions Engage in constructive debate

Students spend their school hours bored, covering irrelevant material, doing mindless tasks, taking far too many standardized tests, and having the creativity and innovation schooled out of them. Our focus shouldn't be to give all kids equal access to the same bad education. We need to reinvent education and give all kids a fighting chance in life. page 58

Four years ago, about 4,900 ninth grades began their high school career in the Boston Public schools. Today there are about 3,400 twelth graders. Nearly one third -- 1500 students -- have dropped out of the class in three and a half years. Almost half of the group that hopes to graduate (1,648) in six months' time has not passed the required standardized test (MCAS).

While nearly 80 percent of fifth graders report being engaged at school, that number drops to only 40 percent by the start of high school. And according to Brandon Busteed, executive director of education at Gallup, “Teachers are dead last among all professions Gallup studied in saying their ‘opinions count’ at work and their ‘supervisors create an open and trusting environment.’ 

Most lecture-based courses contribute nothing to real learning. Consequential and retained learning comes from applying knowledge to new situations or problems, research on questions and issues that students consider important, peer interaction, activities, and projects. Experiences, rather than short-term memorization, help students develop the skills and motivation that transforms lives." [p. 7-8]

another obstacle to educating innovators in universities is the lack of respect for interdisciplinary inquiry, practical knowledge, and applied learning. Discipline-based, in-depth knowledge is important, and basic research makes significant contributions to innovation. It is essential to our future that we continue to support this kind of inquiry, but this cannot—and must not—be the only kind of knowledge that is valued by our universities and our society.

What would a final exam look like in a course organized around a complex problem that must be considered in the light of several disciplines? Students would be asked to write an extended take-home essay about "what it means to be an American."-- and they would know from the first day of class that this was the final exam question. The second part of the final exam would require students to present and defend their papers in a public exhibition where parents would observe and ask questions. The Students’ oral and written work would be assessed on their ability to display a range of evidence to make their points. They would have to meet a performance standard to get a Merit Badge in American Studies.” -- this is the essence of the digital portfolio. (page 139)

a major innovation is one that is so successful that soon after its introduction few people can even remember what life was like before the innovation was introduced.

The mind of an engaged kid is a sponge; a mind that is lectured to is a leaky sieve.

The opportunity for our education system is to use content, concepts, and real-world phenomena to help our kids develop critical skills and inspire them to pursue challenging career paths.

The goal must be to choose the academic content selectively so as to create the required foundation for lifelong learning, without letting the quest for content coverage overwhelm the development of core competencies.

And so our schools are not failing. Rather they are obsolete.

Being an operator will make you a living. Being an owner will make you a fortune - Tony Robbins

Students are encouraged to connect with others, and to collaborate and create with them on a global scale. It’s not “do your own work,” so much as “do work with others, and make it work that matters.” To paraphrase Tony Wagner, assessments focus less on what students know, and more on what they can do with what they know.

When Solo got back to her own hotel room, all her emotions were unleashed. As one player puts it now: “All the sudden, we were seeing furniture fly into the hallway.” Several players who decline to speak on the record say Solo trashed her room and punched a hole in the wall. Nicole Barnhart, the backup goalkeeper who was her roommate at the time, picked up the furniture and put the room back together. Later, Aly Wagner, Cat Whitehill, and Angela Hucles went to Solo’s room to check on her. She was crying. The trio understood why Solo was so upset. The decision to change a goalkeeper in the middle of a World Cup was unprecedented, and everyone knew it. The players tried to support her and give her a pep talk to be ready, just in case. “We get it,” the players told her one by one. “This is an awful thing to go through. We’ve all been there. But you are still part of this team, and we still need you. You never know what’s going to happen in the game.” The press corps in China was small, but once reporters there learned about Ryan’s decision, it was all they could ask about. Would it shake Solo’s confidence? “That’s not our concern,” Ryan said. “We came here trying to win a world championship and put the players on the field that we thought could win each game.” Was Ryan concerned that Scurry would be rusty? “She’ll be ready—wait and see,” he said. Julie Foudy and Tony DiCicco were now both working as broadcast analysts for ESPN. On air, they expressed astonishment at Ryan’s decision and both said, in no uncertain terms, that it was a bad move.

What’s this?” and “What’s that?” But many educators and learning experts contend that our current system of education does not encourage, teach, or in some cases even tolerate questioning. Harvard’s Tony Wagner says, “Somehow, we’ve defined the goal of schooling as enabling you to have more ‘right answers’ than the person next to you. And we penalize incorrect answers. And we do this at a pace—especially now, in this highly focused test-prep universe—where we don’t have time for extraneous questions.

once read that trust is the total number of interactions divided by the number of positive interactions,” she explained. “The higher the number of positive interactions, the greater the trust.

Thomas Jefferson first declared literacy to be the key to citizenship.

Rigor is being in the company of a thoughtful, passionate, reflective adult who invites you into an adult conversation which is composed of the rigorous pursuit of inquiry.

invited parents into a book study of Tony Wagner’s The Global Achievement Gap.

Students were asked only factual recall questions and then given a writing assignment that was, in my opinion, more suited to an elementary school class. They were not asked for their interpretations of the story. They were not asked to discuss a real moral dilemma in their lives and compare it to the one in the story. And they were not asked to write an essay where they would have to analyze a theme of an idea using supporting evidence. In other words, there was no intellectual rigor. Chapter 1

Let’s talk about goal presentations in high school classes. We will be brief because there aren't any. Many students get through high school without ever having to practice and perform a single speech before a real audience." page 112.

In today’s world, if you can’t invent and reinvent your own job and distinctive skills, you risk chronic underemployment. Individuals need to change professions several times in their lifetime. Page 63

Hawaii commissioned a study to find out how much of a teacher’s time would be required to teach all of the state academic content standards in 5th grade. The answer: 3,000 percent of the allotted time.