During my undergrad one of my professors expressed his discontent with the expression the “real world.” Explaining how it devalued the world students are living in as not being “real” and some artificial construct. The world students are living in, while different from our own, is very much real. This notion has stuck with me for quite some time, and I tend to cringe when I hear pretty much anyone use this phrase. The more I think about the “real world” I wonder if we even know what it’s like or if this “real world” exists.
The way students are interacting with the world has and is changing drastically. Jobs may be the same, but the way employees’ complete tasks and interact at these jobs is totally different and will continue to change. This changing workforce combined with the movement to reform education leads me to the idea the “real world” is dead. I have no idea what the world will look like in 5, 10, or 20 years and neither does anyone else. So, this notion that what students are doing at school is great but “it doesn’t work in the real world” is ludicrous to me. Especially when students in K-12 are creative and interested in new things often for the first time. Shutting them down right away is crazy to me. Not only that but students have so much more access to information, experts, foreign nations, and production tools that didn’t exist a few years ago. The “YouTuber” was not a word, let alone a profession, when I graduated from high school in 2010. Now there’s Kylie Jenner who is making money from posting on Instagram (or something, I don’t know the specifics exactly) or Ninja who made over $500,000 a month playing Fortnite. And what I recently learned from the Netflix series Broken there’s a dedicated police force to the world of counterfeit makeup. This is the real world. It’s not my world, my friends, and probably not my neighbors, but the jobs are real, the people are real, their passions are real.
While I’m not saying everyone is a success story in social media fame or their new app, repeating this idea of “that’s not how it works in the real world” is a negative one. Being a professional athlete is a dream many don’t achieve but it didn’t stop me from playing sports nor does it make sports any less important to many schools. I learned a lot about working as a team in my sports career, having students participate and utilizing new technologies with supervision (like coaches or teachers) could lead to better digital citizenship and usage of the world wide web. If people, especially young people, feel supported and are allowed to explore and create, amazing things can happen.
So, what is “the real world?” I don’t know, but I do feel strongly that we should stop using this phrase and usher in the death of “the real world.”
More Questions Than Answers 