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Access to a world of infinite information has changed how we communicate, process information, and think. Decentralized systems have proven to be more productive and agile than rigid, top-down ones. Innovation, creativity, and independent thinking are increasingly crucial to the global economy.
And yet the dominant model of public education is still fundamentally rooted in the industrial revolution that spawned it, when workplaces valued punctuality, regularity, attention, and silence above all else. (In 1899, William T. Harris, the US commissioner of education, celebrated the fact that US schools had developed the "appearance of a machine," one that teaches the student "to behave in an orderly manner, to stay in his own place, and not get in the way of others.") We don't openly profess those values nowadays, but our educational system—which routinely tests kids on their ability to recall information and demonstrate mastery of a narrow set of skills—doubles down on the view that students are material to be processed, programmed, and quality-tested. School administrators prepare curriculum standards and "pacing guides" that tell teachers what to teach each day. Legions of managers supervise everything that happens in the classroom; in 2010 only 50 percent of public school staff members in the US were teachers.
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That's why a new breed of educators, inspired by everything from the Internet to evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and AI, are inventing radical new ways for children to learn, grow, and thrive. To them, knowledge isn't a commodity that's delivered from teacher to student but something that emerges from the students' own curiosity-fueled exploration. Teachers provide prompts, not answers, and then they step aside so students can teach themselves and one another. They are creating ways for children to discover their passion—and uncovering a generation of geniuses in the process.
Good, long article on how education could be reinvented for the 21st century.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VortexCortex on Monday August 24 2015, @09:00PM
First, Sudbury Schools exist and already have no curriculum. [wikipedia.org] They embrace the known fact that children learn different interests and socialize at different levels not directly tied to their age.
Secondly: If you care one ounce about education you owe it to yourself to watch at least the first 20 minutes of this video made in the 90's about the increasingly dystopian mind control methods being used in schools since at least the 60's. [youtube.com] Common Core is a new iteration of the same old agenda: Dumb the kids down with inefficient and incorrect education system, now with injecting social justice. [youtube.com] Right Wing Tinfoil you say? See this link where the material itself says just that. It's not a left vs right but an elite vs dumbed-down-masses. The goal is to create a passive compliant working class and maintain an elite innovator class via private schools, and furthermore to gain corporate control over education via charteschools replacing public schools. This is why Bill Gates pushes Common Core while keeping his kids away from that mind fuckery and in private schools. Hell, The Gates even propose hooking up kids to galvanic response meters [dianeravitch.net] allegedly to rate teacher's teaching effectiveness -- but when you watch the first vid linked and note the fact that the feds have been building personality and attitude profiles of students for decades it becomes apparent that the heart rate and skin conductivity data will simply enrich their personal federal profile (like Common Core is designed to do).
People digging into media figures concerning #Gamergate discovered some strange connections between gaming media and certain Social Justice focused Educational Reform groups. One such discovery was a slew of videos by Microsoft Research about "serious games" initiative. In addition to providing a more immersive way to indoctrinate students. [youtube.com] (Yes, "Sensitivity Training", the game), "serious games" are also "vital to national security", according to Microsoft. [youtube.com] What has this to do with reading, writing and arithmetic? Nothing! Education, as the above links demonstrates, now has a strong behavioral control and political manipulation component. With immediate feedback of educational games and head/eye tracking, input recording and the galvanic response meters, kids won't be able to lie and say, "Yeah, I bought into the brainwashing, graduate me please" and just give the feds the answers they want to see (as they currently can and do today). The sensors will act as a form of lie detector to ensure only kids that actually believe the bullshit pass the grade. Anti-authoritarian freethinkers will have a much harder time of school (as any freethinking person having been through US public education in the past few decades can attest).
Of course one intent of gamification and fine grained tracking technology such as galvanic response, and Kinect (which can now see your heart beat) will be to get the government to buy more stuff from manufacturers of said things, regardless of whether it improves education. Ostensibly, the data collection will be promoted to feds for its ability to "prevent terrorism" or "detect self radicalization", etc. Society considers games a form of entertainment and art and all prior educational game initiatives have failed. In order for "serious games" to take off the Gamer identity needed to die (and be reborn, see, "We're not gamers, we're Players"). This explains why there were all those articles about "Games don't have to be fun", and "Gamers are Dead". The gamejournopros mailing list, founded by Kyle Orland, was leaked and it turned out that "journalists" decided who would and wouldn't get coverage based on such factors as race, sex, and political belief, or whether they fit their SJW narrative. Kyle's father, Martin Orland [wested.org] is Director of Evaluation and Policy Research at WestEd: "A nonpartisan, nonprofit research, development, and service agency working with education and other communities throughout the United States and abroad, WestEd aims to improve education and other important outcomes for children youth and adults." Of course, they're a big proponent of Common Core.
So, I would advise any thinking person to be cautious as fuck when it comes to "new teaching methods". There are really good ones, like just giving kids access to the Internet, and involving them as direct feedback into the the education process by allowing them to decide its direction to some degree themselves, see: Sudbury Schools. And there are others which aim to amplify the existing propaganda in education to bring about a dystopian "Brave New World". [youtube.com]