Boys will be boys

Julie Coates, the generational expert I linked to in my last post, has co-authored a book, Nine Shift, which describes the changing work, life and education landscapes in the 21st century. Check out the Nine Shift blog—no RSS feed yet though :-(

The title Nine Shift "derives from the phenomenon that nine hours in your day will be spent entirely differently in 2020 than they were spent in 2000." The authors suggest that the last time such a shift occurred in society was between 1900 and 1920 and was driven by the automobile. They go on to predict that this latest shift, driven by the Internet, will mirror the influence of the car exactly a century ago.

The UK book launch earlier this year appeared to make a bit of a splash, with the BBC asking "Will boys always be boys?" In the face of international evidence which shows girls out-performing boys in most subjects and at most ages, Coates and co-author William Draves posit that:

…it is not boys who are the problem but schools. For while boys are developing the skills they will need in the "knowledge jobs" of the future, schools are still preparing students for an industrial age which is passing.

Coates and Draves say boys are developing knowledge-age skills despite school, by tinkering with computers and the Internet in the same way their great-grandfathers did by tinkering with automobiles. Lawrence Lessig made the same point in Free Culture (although for different reasons) when he paraphrased John Seely Brown: "…we learn by tinkering."

Boys will be boys. As the BBC point out, "It is a seductive theory."

Update: The Nine Shift blog has er… shifted and now has an RSS feed. Yay!