We like Seth Godin. Bob "discovered" him a few years ago. (No, not like Lana Turner at Schwab's, but he has contributed a great deal to Seth's success by buying nearly every book he's written.) Godin is a distiller of marketing concepts -- a pop-marketing genius.
Why are we so fascinated by a marketing guy? Maybe because we're all marketing something, pretty much all the time, whether it's lunch to the kids or ourselves to our bosses. And marketing has changed so much recently. As Jane Consumer gets more savvy and more inundated, marketers have to be smarter and more creative. It's a fascinating process - at least to us.
We get Seth Godin's blog, and this morning found it double-interesting, since we home-school. It has nothing to do with marketing, but a lot to do with distilling ideas. The blog entry is called "What Is School For?" Heres' a snipet:
So, a starter list. The purpose of school is to:
- Become an informed citizen
- Be able to read for pleasure
- Be trained in the rudimentary skills necessary for employment
- Do well on standardized tests
- Homogenize society, at least a bit
- Pasteurize out the dangerous ideas
There are 27 things on the list. These are the first 6. We don't agree with all of them. We disagree with some of them, but as Seth says in the blog, it should make an interesting starting point for a discussion. We definitely think it's a discussion worth having.