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posted by CoolHand on Monday August 24 2015, @01:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the who'd-a-thunk-it dept.

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.
...
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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24 2015, @07:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24 2015, @07:45PM (#227209)

    Please show the evidence that the tests used for the ranking tested rote memorization.

    That's like asking for evidence that the public school system mainly just requires you to memorize information without understanding it, or asking for evidence that the SAT/ACT test for rote memorization. If you need to ask, you aren't paying attention. I won't do your research for you, so go ahead and ignore the world's problems if you wish.

    What I will say is that you should read the article that person linked to above. If you search for sample problems from that Pisa test they mentioned, for example, you will see that the questions do not actually require you to have a deep understanding of the material. Silly questions that force you to make all sorts of assumptions before you're able to answer how they want you to answer, and if you deviate, then you are 'wrong', even if their questions were ill-conceived. The same sorts of arbitrary problems that teachers try to train students to answer by having them memorize certain patterns. Maybe those are alright by your standards, but they are pathetic by any decent standards.