This is the seventeenth and final in a series of posts explaining the Columbus Acton Academy Principles of Education.

Education Principle #17: Education should focus on long term benefits, not short term results.

Here's a common scenario that happens every year. High School students are given a final exam in Trigonometry concepts in May. They come back in September and they have moved onto Calculus class and will soon forget all the concepts related to Trigonometry. This goes for all students, including those that "aced" the final exam. We have incentivized students to memorize formulas and recipes so they can perform calculations quickly and error free.

This was great in the industrial age, in an age when it paid to memorize that the tangent of x is equal to the sine of x divided by the cosine of x. If you didn't know it and had to use it, it would take a long time to find the answer or find an expert in the field. Today that's no longer the case. With a smart phone, you can find out these answers and how to apply the formulas immediately. With some phone apps, you can even type of the trigonometry formula and get an answer. And despite all of this, our approach to educating children has not changed.

Despite a world of difference in technology since the industrial age, a great test score is still what is most valued at every public school.  We know this because public high schools are ranked based solely on graduation rates and AP / IB / CollegeBoard and State Standardized tests. Want to find the best STEM schools for your child? There's a ranking for that as well and it's based on how well the student body does on AP / IB Math and Science exams.

There is no review of the technology, teaching methodologies or curriculum. There's certainly no review of how well students do after high school. Everything is focused on what happens at the end of the school year as if the goal of any class is to prepare students for a end-of-year exam. If, along the way, students pick up other skills such as critical thinking and creativity skills, then that's a great side effect.

At Acton, that mindset is reversed. We focus on developing the 4 Cs (Critical thinking, Creativity, Communication, Collaboration) because these lifelong valuable skills is what is important for the 21st century.

Further Recommended Reading: Most Likely to Succeed - Preparing Our Kids For The Innovation Era by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith