Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
From an early age, our schools teach our children their ABCs, they teach them how to add and subtract, and at each and every grade level these basic fundamentals are built upon. And though our children have, in essence, one project after another to do from homework to special assignments, nowhere in the curriculum is project management to be found. As a result, numerous bad habits related to "getting things done on time" are formed and very few good habits are developed. As project management is clearly a life skill, might not learning just a bit about project management (simplified of course) from the earliest of grades possible help school children with their education? Or do we think the answer is to let an increasingly ADD-prone generation make their way with iPad-like devices, mobile phones or I should say texting-devices that have the ability to make a telephone call, and Facebook accounts? What if, from 1st grade on, school children learned how to organize their work into projects and how to manage those projects reasonably well? I would contend that many children would be well served by learning and developing this knowledge and skill - and that many parents would have less of their kid's homework to do as well. What do you think..? Saving Changes...
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Harlan BridgesConsultant, Coach, Trainer, Speaker, Program Manager, Project Manager| EntrepreneurSeguin, Tx, United States
Absolutely!!
Some anecdotal evidence, I have a son in college studying digital media. Almost all his current assignments are projects, such as creating videos, radio commercials, trailers for TV shows, you get the picture. Most of them are team projects. I have watched these teams struggle to get things done. Why? They have no project management skills. I have to admit to a little embarrassment, I should have taught my son better.
But I truly believe it should be taught in school, starting at the elementary level.
But they don't even teach spelling or writing skills anymore in many school systems. Saving Changes...
A week or so ago there was a news on LinkedIn about an experiment in a (British?) school where children were given an assignment to run like a project. For the life of me I can't seem to find it again, if anyone still has the link it'd probably be an interesting read.
While I am of the opinion that the education system could use a massive update in order to provide children with knowledge and skills that are actually useful in today's world, in all fairness to say that project management is not taught in schools is a bit myopic. It is true that there is no "project management" class, per se, but if you look at the bigger picture, most of the truly valuable things one learns in school is not found in classes anyway.
So, what part of project management is being taught at school without anyone noticing it? There are countless polls available where the general consensus on a project manager's most important skills are communication and common sense. In a school environment:
* You will find yourself in a classroom with 40-odd peers, making it a highly social setting. You will befriend some, grow to loathe others, ignore the rest, provide your services to those from whom you hope to seek favours in the future, and use those that can be beneficial to you. The socially adept will thrive while the socially inept will have a harder time.
* You will receive your directives from an (usually) unremarkable individual who will neither inspire nor instruct you properly, and more often than not you will be left to your own devices in order to solve the problems and define your own reasons for doing so.
* You will taste both failure and success, and will receive no instruction whatsoever in how to deal with those.
From the above, I conclude that the school environment is, in fact, a sandbox that presents great opportunities to learn the skills of project management. What is fundamentally lacking, is the *awareness* that this environment can be used to develop those skills. Because the role of Project Manager lacks a unified and universal definition, it is unrealistic to assume that children will know what to be on the lookout for - that responsibility, I'm afraid, falls squarely on the shoulders of those of us who claim to be professional project managers. Saving Changes...
Anonymous
My daughter was exposed to project management in middle school with the required science project. Her teacher set it up and ran it as a project. I was really impressed. Project managment techniques were also overtly applied to the production of content and publishing of the high school year book. I think those experiences were helpful and could be extrapolated to other activities that are really a project and not just an assignment. Saving Changes...
Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
Project management is being taught in schools - at least some of them. the PMIEF fund initiatives to teach it, including providing a toolkit of info to enable teachers and project managers to put together a course. You can read two case studies here, one is about a school in Poland and one is in Jordan.
The UK has also developed a PM curriculum and that's been used in a couple of schools now, I think. The UK PMI Chapter presented some information about it last November at an event and you can see a video of what the school achieved here. (Julien, this might be the video you were talking about?) Saving Changes...
Spot on Elizabeth, that's precisely the video I remember. Thanks for finding it! Saving Changes...
Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
Thanks to all for your replies and info on the PMIEF fund and video presented at the UK PMI Chapter. Saving Changes...
Wai Mun KooPMO Director| Intergraph PP&MSingapore, Singapore
I feel that there are two apects of the PM skills - the hard and soft skills. While it is easier for the schools to teach the hard skills, it is not so easy on the soft skills teaching. Let's be honest, most of the adults are still struggling on the soft skills piece. However, we should not just give up yet. Giving the kids some basic knowledge in the soft skills will help to prepare them for the future especially they are extremely adaptable and malleable at their age and will be much easier to absorb new concepts. This is one of the key problems with the older folks who are too entrenched in their old habits.
So, it is really encouraging to see schools start teaching PM skills, but it has to be tailored well for the younger minds.
BTW, I really love this part from Julien:
"* You will receive your directives from an (usually) unremarkable individual who will neither inspire nor instruct you properly, and more often than not you will be left to your own devices in order to solve the problems and define your own reasons for doing so."
It just reminded us how important a good leader is in terms of nurturing or crushing potential star players. Saving Changes...
Wayne MackRetired| RetiredSouth Riding, Va, United States
This is certainly an interesting idea, though in the current Standards of Learning based atmosphere in the US, I am not sure there would be support for teaching project management.
My son is in middle school, and I can see several project management issues that arise. I see similar issues in the business world.
1) Children are multi-tasked at school. They are often working on several projects at once, and if they concentrate on one project, they are at risk of letting another slip.
2) At one extreme, teachers decompose work into individual deliverables, and the students lose track of the big picture as they complete individual steps - define a problem statement, create an outline, write an introductory paragraph, etc. The students then fail to take ownership of the whole project.
3) At another extreme, teachers just set a distant target and fail to track progress. Some students are mature enough to handle this, but many wait until the last night (or ask for an extension). Many students do not know how to decompose their own work and provide inermediate deliverables.
4) Students are often unable or unwilling to communicate project status or admit to challenges in the project. Many times everything is okay up until we find out that the student will be late.
It might be of value to start teaching project management disciplines in grade shools. As a parent and a project manager, I can see similar challenges in school and business projects.
Saving Changes...
Gyanu MishraED| Mycom OSI India Pvt LtdDubai, United Arab Emirates
Great idea, perhaps a watered down approach towards project management (and not the PMBOK :) should be made mandatory. Most children are taught life skills and regardless of work, social or family setups, the basics of project management are typically applied. As an example, going on a trip involves a certain amount of research and advance planning, things might go wrong, while we call it an experience of a lifetime, we do have some mitigation thought out, etc. I suppose it is legitimizing the term project management in our regular lives. Saving Changes...
Joanne Aaronsonformer PM Consultant, now probono offers of support| Life Transformations LLC, retiredReston, Va, United States
does anyone still care about this topic? my understanding is that "project-based learning is now standard in middle and high schools". I taught a very basic project management class to 6th and 7th graders a couple summers ago. I was able to do it because it was a private school where I was given free rein. It was a challenging environment for both the kids and for me to judge how much they could get, but I believe it went well. let me know if you all want to know more about the specifics of what I taught and how I did it.. Saving Changes...
