It's impossible to embark on a radical redesign of education without first identifying and momentarily suspending our most basic (and usually unexamined) assumptions about what's happening in schools. The illustration embedded here identifies some of our current, commonly held, largely unexamined assumptions about education. Each of them has, over time, served to carry us toward … Continue reading Ten Horsemen of the Educational Apocalypse
Public education: mass producing the indolent consumer
I have a friend, a teacher educator, who alternates between amusement and despair: at the chasms between teacher training curricula and current research on teaching & learning, on the one hand … and between research on teaching & learning and the school quality measures that drive teacher education curricula, on the other. Climate change ain't … Continue reading Public education: mass producing the indolent consumer
School Accountability, Feedback Systems, and Cupcake Contests
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” – Albert Einstein – My friend Sam is a gravitational physicist who recently made a disappointing foray into high school teaching. In his late career enthusiasm for kindling new flames of lifelong interest by sharing his research passions with high … Continue reading School Accountability, Feedback Systems, and Cupcake Contests
Their unique place
Even if there is some content knowledge that a culture deems truly necessary for every, single, solitary citizen, are we to believe that transmitting that body of skill and knowledge should take all of the first 18 years of life, that it must necessarily be delivered to all children (sorted by birthdate) in lockstep, and that individualizing education goals on the basis of strength, interest, and local resources should not begin until maturity?
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