because I’ve got several passions in my
life family
music classic racecars and education I’m
passionate about education and I’m
particularly lucky because I have the
impact and the ability through being a
teacher to have an influence on our
young people in our in our world in our
lives I have the ability about it
influence what they learn the way in
which they learn to have an impact on
what their future lives may be I’m also
particularly lucky because I get to step
behind individual subjects and I get to
design educational programs so the
impact that I can have is not just
individual students but rather it’s a
program level spreading across through
in my example at Bond University the
issue that we have is that we have a
problem we have a situation where
graduate employability rates are the
lowest they’ve been in Australia in the
last 20 years we have a situation where
the youth unemployment rate in Australia
is currently sitting at about 13 percent
and on the chart behind me you’ll see
youth unemployment in Australia
progressed over the last 40 years and
what you see is in the early 1980s when
we floated the Australian dollar and we
deregulate our banking system there was
a spike in youth unemployment and a
rapid recovery thereafter as the economy
improved again when the recession we had
to have in the early 1990s came through
a spike in youth unemployment because
when things go tough you get rid of the
people that are most expendable those
that are perhaps less skilled less
experienced and a rapid recovery through
the 90s the Asian financial crisis
Russian debt crisis and the dot-com bust
happened in the early 2000s we again we
see a bit of a spike in youth
unemployment and then the wonderful
economic boom of the 2000 saw a very
significant reduction in youth
unemployment and along came late 2007
the global financial crisis and again we
see the inevitable spike in youth
unemployment but this time there’s no
but recovery in fact things for our
youth here in Australia who are exiting
our schools that are graduating from
university that are that are finishing
their trade schools is becoming even
worse we have a situation at the moment
where one in three of our unemployed
youth are out of work looking for work
for longer than six months and one in
five who are out of work looking for
work are out of work for more than 12
months this is unacceptable
so we look for answers we wonder why
might this be why is it a situation
where we have a we have a segment of our
society it’s finding is so tough and we
look at things like job automation and
say ah the robots are taking all about
all of that jobs automation is coming
through artificial intelligence machine
learning is automating typical jobs that
would be done by entry-level workers we
have PricewaterhouseCoopers coming out
and saying 40% of the jobs in the United
States are going to disappear within the
next 15 years we start to think hmm
maybe we need to rescale ourselves what
we do know that is happening is
uncertainty about you can put out words
like brexit like trump like macron just
in the different way in which business
is happening and commerce is happening
in society is happening every day yeah
how we consume our music things are
changing uncertainty is the new
certainty and so organizations such as
the Institute for the future perhaps the
World Economic Forum go out and they say
oh you must need different new skills we
need these future work skills things
like complex dexterity which robots find
very difficult to do and emotional
intelligence
so yes hairdressing definitely is a
profession that will sustain because you
need to get a talk engage and get to
those fine details of people’s hair yeah
you see things like a design mindset
complex problem-solving
transdisciplinarity the ability to work
in cross-functional cross-cultural
cooperative competitive
team’s skills are changing but we’ve hit
a bit of a roadblock we’re in a
situation where we have a schooling
system which has developed and evolved
to be exceptionally good at delivering
disciplinary skills if I was to be
particularly cynical I could say that
high schools are exceptionally good at
producing a score to enter University
yeah we see that going through our
schooling system despite passionate
teachers that want to have a difference
and want to make a difference in
individual students lives the system
overrides and we get ourselves in a
situation where students come out ready
went to workforce and they’re
ill-prepared so I’ve gone around and
thought well we need a different way of
looking we’re in a world of uncertainty
and if you go back to the literature and
the way how we understand uncertainty go
all the back to way back to the 1920s
when Frank Knight put forward the view
that entrepreneurs were in fact the
masters of uncertainty they had a
particular way of thinking reasoning and
acting in their head that made them not
just lucky risk takers but rather they
had a particular skill at making
decisions where not everything was known
so I went around and I’ve searched the
corporate worlds and I’ve gone to – I’ve
gone to like D school at Stanford
University I’ve gone and examine what
Northwestern does with their exceptional
program have looked at INSEAD I’ve
examined our own Australian ecosystem
I’ve gone to the way the corporates run
start mate river city labs Y Combinator
and I’ve come up with a view as to not
necessarily the skills that we need to
develop in our education system but
rather the mindsets that we need to
develop in our education system and for
me it starts with curiosity because when
you look at our little prep students
that come in to primary school wide-eyed
ready to go they’re curious they examine
the corner of the room they pick up the
little pencils that are not allowed to
use just yet their curiosity abounds
our schooling system does a very very
good job at squashing that out through
standardized testing yeah exceptionally
good
perhaps for understandable reasons
assurance of learning yeah understanding
how we’re educating and can we test that
we are there are good reasons behind
this system but they’re failing our
youth once you start with curiosity you
tend to show interest in something
that’s an interesting little point
that’s an interesting endeavor I might
give that a bit of a go and as you give
things ago you didn’t tend to develop
competency in those areas you start to
perform people look at you they start to
promote you you start to become good and
before you know it you start developing
a bit of a passion I was going to be a
currency trader I did an undergrad in
economics and finance a minor in quant
I’ve got a master’s in finance a PhD in
finance I was gonna be a currency trader
and here I am designing education
programs because I’m passionate about
them because one particular educator
asked me to come back and teach a class
and that interest developed into a
passion in order to solve problems you
need to have a creative mindset to see a
new way of being able to attack to
understand to knock down and think
creatively how you might be able to
solve that problem and as we know when
we look at successful entrepreneurs at
the root of every successful
entrepreneurial story is is a tale of
resilience of determination of
persistence of perseverance and for me I
could look and I can see constructs on
how to build creativity we know about
design thinking you know about mindset
and problem solving the empathetic mind
rather than eco-centric mind but this
concept of resilience was a bit
struggling for me and I I went around
eyes I started to imagine how we might
be able to embed resilience into our
education system how do you do that so
my initial view was of resilience was
there was this individual on a journey
and the journey was unknown and you
might be reflecting back to your
readings of Joseph Campbell and the
hero’s journey you know
as you go down this path you get these
trials and tribulations that come
through and it’s your internal grit and
guts and determination and your
particular perseverance that gets you to
your goal at the end and it was an
individual construct that I was looking
at so when in His infinite wisdom
Queensland’s chief entrepreneur Mark
Selby put out that he was going to
launch the first ever venture program
run by been south of a man who won the
best job in the world a global
adventurer about building resilience
I said that’s for me I need to find out
what this resilience construct is how
can I learn it
what can I see how it does does it
develop and how can I embed that into a
into pedagogy such that we can build it
in our youth supplement application in
and I was lucky enough to be selected
along with 18 other members of the
Queensland entrepreneurial ecosystem
venture capitalists startup founders
community leaders and you’re gonna laugh
a little bit for our resilience test we
went to the whitsundays we landed in
Hamilton Ireland and over the this is
just last week I got back on Sunday
hence the facial hair and and for seven
days we were we launched into a journey
that at times was physically demanding
at many times was mentally demanding and
we were we were blessed with having some
very inspirational people come and talk
to us I’m just gonna focus on one that
was macalinski and you might have heard
macalinski’s story a gentleman who was a
celebrated chef who on Christmas Day in
2011 Christmas tree caught fire and
resulted in the loss of his wife and his
three daughters third-degree burns to
65% of his body
induced coma for two months lost 25
kilos no muscle mass but this is a man
that hit I think I haven’t seen anything
else that can match it absolute rock
bottom and he talked about the fact when
he first woke up out of the coma
it was his dad that was right by his
side
and he and he discussed with us the
process that he rebuilt his life and as
I was listening to this tale it reminded
me of and as you do you as you as you
listen these things it reminded me of
of my own relatively insignificant
challenges in life and a little visual
that dr. Dave and he’ll know who he is
embedded in my mind as to how to look
how to survive a period of grief the
period of challenge and you can imagine
that yourself as a glass and you’re a
glass and you’re sitting on the edge of
a table and there’s a concrete floor
below you and you are you’re falling off
the table and you’re going to hit that
concrete floor and each of us is our own
particular glass we might be a fragile
crystal champagne flute we might be the
kind of tumbler that you put your
favorite scotch into nice thick walled
big solid bass yeah we as an individual
have our own resilience construct that
we can build that we’re influenced by no
there’s only three components to this
you are one of them the second is the
table and the height of the table and
when I went through my particular
challenge I thought I was on a pretty
big high table you can think of it maybe
as a coffee table maybe as a dining
table maybe as a high bar or maybe mat
Galinski yeah so you can start to
rationalize the height of your table and
the third thing you can do is you can
look down at their concrete floor and
you can choose to put pillows down there
and your pillows are your support
network and when I look back at my
pillows it was my family it was my close
friends it was dr. Dave it was a it was
a supportive group that moderated and
improved my resilience through their
resilience and that’s what I took out of
the Queensland venture program the
resilience isn’t just an individual
construct resilience is actually a
system-wide construct and a resilient
community a resilience school a
resilient classroom builds in a
resilient student
we can put things around that students
but we must build it in our program our
program needs to support the types of
outcomes we want in our students so we
have the opportunity I’ve been a
singularity University I’ve read Peter
demand his work and he has this
beautiful book called optimism of
abundance you must read it we are in a
situation of abundance and we can choose
to make the difference in the way in
which we educate we’ve got a review
happening of a national curriculum at
the moment you know it’s impending time
is coming to be implemented we have the
opportunity to start not delivering on
disciplinary skills or rather I should
say not only delivering on disciplinary
skills but rather to be delivering on
the type of cognitive abilities the type
of mindsets that we know sit under the
entrepreneurial method that’s our
opportunity such that we can launch our
youth into a vibrant world an optimistic
world an abundant world where they are
the Masters of designing their own
income be it as an employee as an
employer as a start-up founder as a side
hustle whatever it is they want to be
and our schooling system needs to match
that so tonight I make the very strong
case that experiential entrepreneurship
education is a is a required koma
component of our overall schooling system thank you