Zenon Evans Says School Sucks! 'Maker Culture' Is Literally Making Learning Better

Perched in a watchtower above a live-sized game of Mouse Trap, MythBusters host Adam Savage announced, "When you make something … you're telling a story about your desires. … You're using your tools to improve yourself and the world around you." He was directing the point to the younger attendees in his crowd of hundreds at Maker Faire in San Mateo, California, this past weekend. Their stories and desires are varied, but there was a consistent theme among many makers: They want to make life and learning more liberated, more fun, and a bit more rugged. Why do they want this? Because, as millennials know all too well from zero tolerance policies and restrictive "free speech zones," school sucks. Zenon Evans says that the class of 2014 could learn something from the eclectic maker movement about visceral, hands-on opportunities to succeed (or fail), because they can teach an individual more about herself and her abilities than any standardized test or mandatory general education course ever could.