Robert Evans on "Educational Question of the Year"
Rob Evans initially declined our invitation to respond the "Educational Question of the Year" for the reasons stated below. However, in doing so, his reply contained a fair amount of food for thought, and with his kind permission that email response is reproduced below. Although his writing and consulting has primarily focused on the K-12 arena, many of his ideas are of interest to those of us in higher education. I found his book "The Human Side of School Change: Reform, Resistance and the Real-Life Problems of Innovation" to be a thought-provoking read.
Thanks for your inquiry, Don. I'm afraid I have no expertise to offer
about what students will need in the future. I thought they could
count votes in Florida 6 years ago. I thought major companies, when profitable, would not lay off people or abandon their pension plans.
Moreover, I have to honestly say that I'm not drawn to the question, for two reasons. First, over my professional lifetime, the "experts"
who have answered this kind of question, dating back to the Rand guys from the 60s (Kahn and company), have been consistently wrong.
Second, it is one thing to speculate about what students will need in the future, and quite another to imagine that schools can manage
whatever this would be, given when they are up against. In this
regard, I would refer you to my recent book, "Family Matters: How
Schools Can Cope with The Crisis in Childrearing," or to some of my
recent articles on this topic (available at my web page—see below).
Best wishes,
Rob Evans
Robert Evans, Director of The Human Relations Service is a clinical and organizational psychologist, author and school consultant. Links to several of his articles on education can be found at http://robevans.org