When we were discussing the philosophy of our school division today, I decided to look at the Google philosophy and fell upon this quote:
Great just isn’t good enough.
We see being great at something as a starting point, not an endpoint. We set ourselves goals we know we can’t reach yet, because we know that by stretching to meet them we can get further than we expected. Through innovation and iteration, we aim to take things that work well and improve upon them in unexpected ways. For example, when one of our engineers saw that search worked well for properly spelled words, he wondered about how it handled typos. That led him to create an intuitive and more helpful spell checker.
Would you work for a company like this? Is this type of vision inspiring enough? Do our schools have this type of vision? Are they ever that bold?
Do people want to be a part of something where “greatness” is a minimum standard? I believe in the importance of ethics, being a good citizen, and they are so important we to have those things in our school while aiming for great. Greatness and wisdom can go hand-in-hand.
When working with kids, can we shoot for anything less? What do you think?
