Innovating education
My friend who writes about parenting, bullying, and schools wrote an article called, Parenting a Life of Meaning, In it she asks: Is it really normal that children should hate school? Should we as parents and society tolerate that children spend 6-8 hours a day bored, uninterested, and uninspired?”
There’s a lot written now about the crisis in our public school system. But is it a crisis, or as one author writes, just a bit “like democracy itself, loose, shaggy, and inefficient, full of redundancies and conflicting goals?” Whether crisis or not, right now education is in need of innovation and I don’t just mean technology. Real innovation, and not just sustaining innovation is needed, starting with the goal of education.
The folks at RSA put out a video well worth the 12 minutes to watch. Changing Educational Paradigms asks some very simple yet disruptive questions about education
This is Great Julie. Another way to think about this issue is by examining how our educational system today was and is one of the greatest inventions in this nation’s history. A product of the “industrial revolution”. It seems the goals and objectives for education have changed. We even define it differently.
The educational institution was created to drive and employ the world of industry and It seems as if it figured
out some great stuff (see the history of” multiple choice”). I’m interested in finding out what kind of education this revolution will forge. Let’s look first at the product and then change the “process”. What kind of world do we want? I’m not so anxious to start changing things till I know where we’re headed.
Right, the mismatch between the Enlightenment Age goals and where we are now is glaringly evident, as the RSA video points out. I’m with you that the first question to ask is: where are we headed? What do we want our educational system to accomplish? I’m not sure I/we have the answer to that one yet.
Next time I’ll watch the video before I comment.
I thought I had seen it before. This one is new to me.
I agree totally. It’s about a paradigm shift.
My question is; how does that happen?
As he said: “it’s in our DNA”
B-)
Julie,
This vision would really support the different kind of learning and probably meet the “standards”. At least, that would be my dream. And along the lins of “dream” what exactly do you mean in your latest blog, when you write, “a thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.” ? You weren’t talking specifically about MLK but in general yes? Thank goodness I had my son reading over my head, I think he’s caught most of my typos. 
Thanks.
I finally watched this. This was really spot on! I work in the schools as a counselor and as the new teachers come in and the elders retire, there is a feeling of loss as the new educational reforms are coming our way. However, I must say, that teachers who are passionate really continue to do these kind of practices within the confines of the new policies and standards. When I think of PW and how the learning environment is set up to learn,it reflects exactly this idea.
I also notice that the word “epidemic” is seemingly the word of the time right now. I would love to hear from you a blog on your thoughts about that. I agree that ADHD is an epidemic on our time.
Lastly, well almost, I remember when I was not identifying with my way of intelligence and you said, “you’ve got to be your own dog”
Mary