Here’s Todd Rose, on The Myth of Average, from a TEDxTalk that I’m hoping you will spend 20 minutes listening to:

When we design for the average we destroy talent.

Why?

Simple. No one is average.

Average people simply don’t exist, as proven by the US Air Force many decades ago. So designing for the average means we don’t design for anyone. Even before Todd started to draw parallells into the educational system, my mind had made a frog leap there, because if ever there was a system designed for the average, it’s that one.

So what can be done to combat this talent destruction? The US Air Force decided to ban the average, and go from designing to the average, to designing for the edges instead.  When will this create the changes we desperately need within educational systems across the globe?