This Is What We Get To Do.

Atul Gawande recently delivered the commencement address at Stanford University's School of Medicine. Many of you will notice that this is not the first time that I use talk of medicine to discuss education - the parallels are striking.

Two sections, in particular, stick out.

Gawande speaks about the need to develop an effective system rather than simply developing effective components of a system. We all can understand that having a great Neurologist isn't that helpful when you have a heart attack. However, we don't often recognize the corollary in education: having wonderful early intervention programs is great, unless you're a struggling high school student - in that case, it doesn't much matter. Geoffrey Canada is the man best known for trying to develop an effective system - cradle to college, as he calls it - but much more needs to be done. We need to think about the entirety of the system. Gawande offers this example:

"[There's a] famous thought experiment in which an attempt is made to build the world’s greatest car by assembling the world’s greatest car parts. We connect the engine of a Ferrari, the brakes of a Porsche, the suspension of a BMW, the body of a Volvo: What we get, of course, is nothing close to a great car; we get a pile of very expensive junk.”

The work ahead of us will be very difficult, and we will be forced to think creatively in order to effectively harness our constantly evolving knowledge. To conclude, we return again to Gawande:

"This will take science. It will take art. It will take innovation. It will take ambition. And it will take humility. But the fantastic thing is: This is what you get to do."

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Mark