Pink

[Home]

=Daniel Pink -=

Ideas
Daniel Pink has approached education and businesses with a law background and suggests that any place where there is a manager and people underneath need to change their focus on directive approaches to completing tasks and allow free flowing, creative work in which the workers or students do what they want, how they want and where they want. His idea stems from years of research where scientists were surprised to learn that on activities that require critical thinking, offering rewards actually increased the amount of time needed to complete the task and lowered their ability to solve problems. However, using the same rewards systems, scientists learned that simple goals that require no critical thinking skills where steps just need to be followed, the higher the rewards were, the faster they finished the task. The problem with this is that computers and outsourcing eliminates the need for people to do these simple, step-following jobs. Tomorrow's workers will need to be able to think critically.

Pink's idea goes on to suggest that the work place and education needs to get away from extrinsically motivating students to succeed, but to switch and let students work on what they want so that learning becomes intrinsic.

Background
Daniel Pink started as a lawyer and thus worked as an aside to U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich as well as other positions in politics and government. His last job was in the White House where he worked as Chief Speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore.

Achievements
Daniel has written several bestselling books about changing the work world.

Education
Pink's Education consists of a BA from Northwestern University, and a JD from Yale Law School, although he never practiced law.

Personal Thoughts
I think that Daniel Pink brings a different perspective to the educational table. He seems to have proven his ideas with many real life situations that suggest that changing classrooms to an intrinsically motivated collaboration would pay off many fold. I think that this kind of educational reform, as any kind of reform, is going to be extremely challenging and will take many years, if not decades, to actually work. Some school would have to take the risk and actually adapt his ideas into their educational philosophy and have it work before schools in general would even consider it.

-started by Chris Gargasz

 I agree that it is always good to have different perspective's on crucial aspects of life like education reform, but I have to admit that Pink's ideas don't completely seem to add up to me. I think that this kind of reform could perhaps work wonders on some students, but definitely not on all. Grade school is the one period in our life where we need a good combination of being told what to do and being able to do what we want, in my opinion. That guidance is what shapes who we are as adults. For many students, I feel that this kind of reform would make them naive, inexperienced young adults who feel like they should have whatever they want without having to work for it. I don't want to totally bash Pink's ideas however, and think that certain groups of students, like students with some exceptionalities for example, would thrive from this. I would be interested in seeing this theory put to the test on some schools, but definitely not on all! Daniel Pink does have a very impressive background though, and seems to have done thorough research, so he might just be on to something! -Christie

I believe that Pink has a few good points about freeing up the workforce and allowing people to be more creative with their work, however, there are some people that do not want to be creative and just want to get paid. As for bringing such freedom to the classrooms, his ideas would have to be modified and like you said, accepted, which would take quite a while. -Andy Luciano