Braindancing Bytes: AMBITION DEFICIT DISORDER? by Dilip Mukerjea

Today, rapid change and unpredictability have become the dominant facts of life. How do you live comfortably in an uncomfortable world? To stay relevant, and competitive, be aware, and beware: either you’re distinct, or you’re extinct!

Being ‘very good’ has become ‘very boring’; you have to be outstanding. Too many students have been ambushed by demonic syllabuses matched with toothless learning systems.

The Result? Ambition Deficit Disorder.

Teachers, students, and parents, need immediate help.

What makes an epic learning ambience, a contest of intelligences, one that grips from gun to tape and doesn’t depend on the cheap thrills of a frantic final lap? We need context, drama, quality, and a balance between power and skill.

Too many students are guilty of “final lap” panic “learning,” struggling to “re-collect” shards of information in the brain. This disables them in the real-world arena of high-stakes global competition, particularly within tournaments featuring innovation and entrepreneurship.

If classroom communication follows the path of creation instead of concussion, we would witness a Cambrian explosion of learning via strategies that make meaning, heighten attention,and review information in the manner the brain loves to learn.

The Outcome:

Learning becomes relevant, and intrinsically motivating, because the experience succeeded in:

(1) increasing our gain;

(2) easing our pain;

(3) educating to entertain;

Students exposed to learning strategies based on the physiology and psychology of the brain will create their own astonishment.

Why?

Because classroom experiences will become crisp, clear, compelling! They will be creating the mental infrastructure to survive and thrive in any environment: to successfully engage with complexity, change, and creativity.

In today’s bruised business environment, obedience, compliance, and diligence can be obtained for free.

Business leaders are looking for passion, courage, and ideas...qualities as essential as sunlight.

Can our institutions educate and inspire our children to deliver what it takes to become business-ready for the Third Millennium?