Doublethink: The Creativity-Testing Conflict
by YongZhao
Originally published by Education Week Online: July 17, 2012 and in Print: July 18, 2012. See also Education Week blogger Catherine A. Cardno’s interview with the me about my latest book, “Zhao on Entrepreneurship, the Common Core, and Bacon.”
Doublethink is “to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them,” according to George Orwell, who coined the phrase in his novel 1984.
American education policymakers have apparently entered the zone of doublethink.
They want future Americans to be globally competitive, to out-innovate others, and to become job-creating entrepreneurs. Last year, the Obama administration announced a $1 billion-plus public-private initiative to support entrepreneurial activities, which included support and rhetoric surrounding youth-entrepreneurship education. And the U.S. Department of Education says that “entrepreneurship education as a building block for a well-rounded education not only promises to make school rigorous, relevant, and engaging, but it
