Something ventured? Then something gained. A plea for digital education.

"The digital revolution is over."

Media expert Nicholas Negroponte made this rather bold claim in Wired magazine back in 1998. His point was that "digital" is now the new "normal." According to Negroponte, "the really surprising changes will be elsewhere, in our lifestyle and how we collectively manage ourselves on this planet."

I think that education is a key factor in this collective-management task, and by this I certainly mean education in the Humboldtian sense. At the same time, I agree with computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum's position to the effect that the essential basics for meaningful use of the Internet are literacy, skepticism and critical faculties. As far as I am concerned, these are also the essential basics we need in order to develop into individuals who are self-determined and can think autonomously – and, thus, who are free. But this perspective does not prompt me to demand that computers be banned from classrooms.

Instead, it leads me to conclude that the education system needs to be expanded, so that it can teach the useful knowledge and skills that are growing more and more important in the digital world.

This becomes immediately obvious when we look at the big areas that need to be managed. Our world, for example. Our lives. And, especially, our coexistence. Because all of these things are already digital, and they will become even more digital. We thus need to offer our children digital programs that will enable them to encounter the digital, and that will facilitate learning and thus support their education.

Only very few schools order fast Internet accesses!

This is one of the reasons why Deutsche Telekom plans to vigorously expand fiber-optic connectivity for schools and universities. Currently, only about eight percent of all schools in Germany order fast Internet accesses. As far as I'm concerned, this amounts to an education-sector scandal, because most schools already have the bandwidth they would need for faster accesses.

Digitization has been reaching into all areas of our lives. Just think of our digital photography, for example.

These changes are often providing greater convenience and creating new opportunities for growth. At the same time, they mean that our society – and businesses are a part of our society – has to change. Or, more aptly, can change! Individuals are receiving much greater opportunities for their development; many previously insurmountable obstacles to such development are disappearing.

Nowadays, everyone has the opportunity the become the designer of the future!

For example, we no longer need to make a distinction between theoreticians and practitioners, or, more pointedly, between thinkers and doers. Our children, digital natives that they are, are evolving from consumers into producers, in their hours of play. In the media industry, this trend has been apparent for some time now. Back in the day, you needed to be on television to become famous. You needed to be on a channel like Germany's RTL and on a program like "Deutschland sucht den Superstar" [the German spinoff of the British show "Pop Idol"]. Today, any upscale laptop comes with the hardware and software you need for producing films. This has enabled the rise of the YouTube stars.

Boundaries are blurring in similar ways in industrial production. Not too long ago, research called for a laboratory. Now, it's easy and cheap to measure the real world with sensors and analyze their data. Not so long ago, to produce workpieces you needed a factory, or special manual skills. Today, we have 3-D printers.

The fact is that digitization is giving us tools that are enabling us to become doers.

Creativity is still a big part of the equation, however. Often, creativity is simply the ability to combine things we have learned, and things already out there, in new ways. Practical implementation of such thinking ability, which ultimately has to do with recombination, leads to innovations. Uber, the transportation-service provider, shows us how this can work. Automobiles, drivers, and smartphones were all in place before Uber ever came along. But Uber used these three elements to create a completely new mobility concept.

Are we giving our childen the tools and resources they need in order to collectively manage themselves?

That is what tomorrow's world will be like. To some extent, it is also what today's world is like. Are we preparing our children for this? Are we giving them the tools and resources they need in order to collectively manage themselves? Are we addressing the problem that a pupil from Cologne recently tweeted about, in beautifully succinct words? She wrote, "I am almost 18 and I know virtually nothing about taxes, rent or insurance. But I can analyze a poem. In four languages."

So what is the content that we need to be teaching our children? And how should we be teaching them? Can digitization support us in this task?

But first, about content. As I mentioned, in a digitized world, one important objective is to enable thinkers to also be doers.

We thus need to reinforce those skills that enable people to be doers.

As far as I'm concerned, one of those skills, most certainly, is programming. At school, our children learn English, a world language. Programming languages are also world languages. Java, Ruby and their ilk are now used worldwide, and they make international cooperation in the digital sector possible. What's more, we need to take media theorist Douglas Rushkoff's adage to heart:

"program or be programmed."

He is convinced that only people who can program can understand how the digital world functions – and thus be able to help shape it. And for this we don't even need to establish a separate subject area; mathematics and computer science already provide the proper framework.

I also think we need to be doing a better job of teaching economics. Among the great Silicon Valley inventors, we find not only good tinkerers, such as Mark Zuckerberg, but also marketing geniuses such as Steve Jobs and entrepreneurs such as Jeff Bezos. And we need to learn to fail. In other words, we need to help children develop attitudes that enable them to think big and do big things. To take chances.

The saying "nothing ventured, nothing gained" is actually off the mark. A better saying would be "something ventured, something already gained."

We need some kind of digital revolution!

When we talk about the "what" of education, we also need to talk about the "how." To enable our children to shape the digital world, we have to digitize the means by which knowledge is imparted. We need some kind of digital revolution in this area. We need to adapt existing systems to the current development toward a digital world. In this vein, there is a great deal to be said for massive open online courses, so-called "MOOCs." They can provide new learning opportunities, for children and for people of all ages. They do this in that they do not require pupils to be in specific locations.

The examples of this new approach to education include Coursera and Udacity, two online universities in the United States. One has to ask why Udacity, which was founded by a German, Sebastian Thrun, did not also emerge in Germany. And why does Germany, according to international studies such as the International Study on Computer and Information Literacy, rank last in working with digital media?

In addition to poets and thinkers, we obviously need more digitizers.

There are already many out there. Many pupils and many teachers are already doing great things in the area of digital innovation. Webinars – in conformance with German data privacy laws – are now an established part of the repertoire of German universities. For years, people have been calling for closer connections between theory and practice. Now, theory and practice are becoming linked better than ever before, thanks to cooperative study programs and to reliance on instructors who are also practitioners. The will is thus in place. But the steps being taken still seem – and I am just an observer – to be too hesitant.

I am convinced that if we want to offer all of our children the same opportunities for a digital future, then we have to ensure that the same key educational content is available at every school, and not just at a few select, elite or private institutions.

Germany is among the lowest-ranking countries in use of digital media in instruction.

I am thus concerned that the digital transformation has not yet reached our schools in full measure. Germany is among the lowest-ranking countries in use of digital media in instruction. Along with a lack of the equipment needed for widespread IT-based instruction, the problems include a shortage of qualified teachers who are trained to use computer technologies. This is a major "construction site" in the German education system. The foundation Deutsche Telekom Stiftung has been addressing this issue; it is working to strengthen provision of digital competencies in teacher training. Such efforts are a small but important step.

A final thought:

While the education system has to be a great many different things, there is one thing that it definitely should not be – part of some supply chain that delivers specially tailored human beings, as "HR raw materials," to companies' doors.

So let's allow our children more time. To actively discover the world. And to discover themselves. All of us are constantly getting older. There is no reason to rush or make any hectic moves.

Our children have long since surpassed us, the older generation, in terms of skills in handling technology. We really have nothing to teach them about such skills. But we do need to offer them a protected space in which they can encounter digitization and reflect on it.

And we need to give them something that will ensure they can shape and design technology, as well as simply use it.