The cynic in me says that you will never have a shortage of people who are willing to be led. It's less work, less responsibility, and less blame when things go wrong. All other things being equal, there will be plenty of people willing to take the path of least resistance.
If you are right, and I'm inclined to believe that you are, the problem then becomes how to educate such people so that they are useful in an increasingly high-tech world. Anyone who is content doing the low-responsibility grind is very unlikely to take entrepreneurial-level initiative in their own education, so the best method of training them really is the cog-in-the-machine style system that we have in place. The problem is not the existence of our meat grinder education, but the lack of existence of any alternative for people who don't fit in it (entrepreneurs, the terminally curious, smart people in general). Ironically, the author bemoans our one-size-fits-all approach and then proposes replacing it with another of the same characteristic. Really, we need both.
I think part of that is due to education. If you spend 12 years getting trained to sit there and do what others say, it's not surprising that you have that as your default.
It could be sample bias, but the friends I have who went to Montessori school, which trains people in self-direction and independence, seem to be much more willing to try things and to take responsibility for outcomes.
I have many coworkers (as an engineer) who would refuse (and in some cases, have refused in the past) a chance to have others working under them. They're just satisfied being told what to do, then doing it the best they know how.
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The cynic in me says that you will never have a shortage of people who are willing to be led. It's less work, less responsibility, and less blame when things go wrong. All other things being equal, there will be plenty of people willing to take the path of least resistance.
If you are right, and I'm inclined to believe that you are, the problem then becomes how to educate such people so that they are useful in an increasingly high-tech world. Anyone who is content doing the low-responsibility grind is very unlikely to take entrepreneurial-level initiative in their own education, so the best method of training them really is the cog-in-the-machine style system that we have in place. The problem is not the existence of our meat grinder education, but the lack of existence of any alternative for people who don't fit in it (entrepreneurs, the terminally curious, smart people in general). Ironically, the author bemoans our one-size-fits-all approach and then proposes replacing it with another of the same characteristic. Really, we need both.
I think part of that is due to education. If you spend 12 years getting trained to sit there and do what others say, it's not surprising that you have that as your default.
It could be sample bias, but the friends I have who went to Montessori school, which trains people in self-direction and independence, seem to be much more willing to try things and to take responsibility for outcomes.
I have many coworkers (as an engineer) who would refuse (and in some cases, have refused in the past) a chance to have others working under them. They're just satisfied being told what to do, then doing it the best they know how.