In “High Concept, High Touch”, Pink examines the growth of third world societies from a farmer society from the current transition into a thinking and empathetic society, and features even more closely the value that today’s citizens have in this new age. Without the ability to provide novel ideas in an already knowledgeable society, people are not able to compete with the rest of society in “mere survival” (Pink 51).
The basis for his argument with socieety becoming more right brained happens to coincide with his three arguments for present-day evidence, and one in particular stood out to me: GM motor’s as a business in art. Evidence of this new approach from GM has been seen not only in this one car company, but in all car advertisements that can commonly be seen in normal everyday life. This singlee example by itself proves just how visually oriented the world is becoming today. Corporate businesses have begun to incorporate more disciplines into their work–primarily art, because it grabs their customers’ attention. Again, workers who aren’t able to produce products that are physically and emotionally appealling are left out in the rain, because they were taught knowledge, not empathy. The knowledge is now available to everyone, so what use is it to any one person unless they can create something entirely new out of it?
On the other side of the coin, those who are able to create must be able to continually do so. And this new “artsy” side of America cannot be explained in the traditional sense, which is what readers would tend to belive at first. Art, for many people of the right-brained persuasion, goes hand-in-hand with the idea of new creation. Those who understand this new creation can make it; those who make it must continue to make it.
So that brings us to how to teach our children this new kind of culture. A test-happy America is sadly outdated in its teaching techniques, which gear children’s minds in a direction more applicable to the past society of knowledge. Teaching creativity is now more vital in order to promise the next generation of children a happy future, but the system simply is not having it. Too much trial and error is required in order to create this new system, and the age of creativity is just around the corner. Unfortunately, this means that many people will simply be left behind, unless they learn to adapt to these new global conditions.
There are several examples of some trial in creative teaching. For example, Professor Robert Sternburg of New Haven, Pennsylvania is developing an augmentation for the current SAT, called the Rainbow Project. It measures the reactions to humor and real-life situations, which are better able to determine how well a student will do in college, when compared to SAT results. It may also open up new roads to people who’s creativity and empathy were not measured in the SAT, and who have had many roads to success closed to them. This new test could potentially decrease both the wealth and racial gaps that many people feel today.
Overall however, the real question with the coming of this new Conceptual Age is: what exactly are we supposed to do to prepare ourselves for this society of empaths and creators? Pink focuses on the answer to that question in the rest of his book; being unable to read this book currently, I am forced to create my own answer. Creating alternatives for our current schooling system seems the most immediate answer. It does not solve every problem however, and perhaps the creation of a new system that is completely untested would result in more problems. Other solutions may include granting further liberal education for those who were not able before, due to various circumstances. Whatever the future solutions may be, the result is that our future society will be much more focused on right-brain thinking, a movement that may change the way that the word itself thinks.