Power to the People

"Will kids go back to school just like they always did?" I asked Karim Abouelnaga in an interview I was wrapping up with him for paparelli.com.

Karim is the founder and CEO of Practice Makes Perfect. He started by administering and delivering summer school programs to the NYC school system. Practice Makes Perfect now employs close to four hundred educators who deliver education programs to the poor in NYC schools year-round.

It would be understating it a bit to say Karim knows primary and middle school public education. He is a product of the system. His personal and business mission for the last ten years has been to narrow the education achievement gap in the public school system.

When I asked Karim this question, I thought it was a simple wrap-up question to end our interview. But what he said really surprised me.

"We will never go back to the traditional classroom system in public education," he stated with downward voice inflection.

"What? Really?" I said.

He explained, "We are seeing a major change in our society. The people are taking back the power from the institutions. One of the indicators is the cryptocurrency explosion. People even want to control their own currency. They don't want their currency dictated to them by their governments."

"How do you see this playing out in schools?" I asked.

"There will be three models. The in-classroom model, the virtual model, and the hybrid model. The parents will no longer have the education institution dictate how their children will be educated. This pandemic showed the parents they have options, choices, and freedom. Their needs do not need to be sacrificed to the institutional authority and dictates. It is no longer about what is best for the institution. It is what is best as decided by the people the institution serves," he explained.

As we talked about people taking back the power from the institutions, other examples began to surface.

"What about business?" Karim asked.

Then he answered his own question by saying, “Employers are telling their employees they will return to work on a certain date. The employers, including institutions like Google, were shocked to get pushback. And not mild pushback, but more along the lines of ‘I'll quit if you make me come to the office.’”

Here is a reaction from employees on the CEO's request.

Chris Bradfoot, a programmer at Google, wrote on Thursday that frustration spread on social media last week: “I talked to some colleagues at Google and they said they would leave if they were pushed back into office in September.”

He went on to say, “Many employees joined the conversation to share their opinions, and some said they could look for another job if Google forced them to return to their offices." (Click here for the full story.)

Karim got me thinking more deeply about this. It is like he gave me eyes to see. I have a new lens, a new way of seeing what is happening in the world. A new way to interpret what is happening around the world. A new paradigm from which to understand the “why” behind people’s behaviors.

I now see what he is talking about in:

• Education

• Social Justice

• Law Enforcement

• Business

• Media (the cord-cutting movement)

• Religion

• Government

Is this a macro trend that will reshape society?

The people appear to no longer believe the institutions have their best interests at heart.

The pandemic gave us a chance to step off the merry-go-round of life. To stop doing what we do because that's the way we are expected to do it. We stayed in our own homes. We spent time with our wives/husbands and kids. We set our own schedules based on our personal priorities. We reclaimed our lives from the institutions.

The institutions are now trying to take back our lives. People are standing up and saying, "No. I like the way my life is now. You need to serve me. I don't need to submit to how you do business. I have a life. It is my life, not yours. You must submit to how I want to do business with you. I don't serve you. You serve me."

This is a radical change from how our society operated in the past.

• Where will this macro trend lead our nation, our world?

• Is this really a trend or a brief and unsustainable revolution?

The next year or two will answer these questions.

In the meantime, please join me in looking at what is going on around you through this new lens.

The people are taking back the power from the institutions.