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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, @08:02PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24 2015, @08:02PM (#227214)

    I said what it was meant to be. Then stated what it turned into.

    You could tell what you just said to all my friends who have kids in grade school.

    One of my friends had to go in and get ahold of the teaching curriculum to decide what his kid was NOT learning. He did that after he asked his 7th grader what time is it on the watch he had sitting on the dash of his car and his hands were full of a carburetor and grease and the kid couldnt do it. He then quizzed the rest of his 4 kids. Not one could tell the fucking time. Simple fractional division? Nope. Simple multiplication without a calculator? Nope. But they could subdivide a problem all day long. Suddenly the kid went from A/B student to probably having tutoring. As the real test his parents asked he could not even begin on doing. Plus the follow 3 kids getting the same education.

    School districts have a LOT of leeway in what they teach. They also do not want to get shut down being 'the under performing one'. So they figure out mostly the things on the test and teach ONLY that. They do not walk in and say 'CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.EE.A.2.A'. They find a similar problem to that one change it up a bit and make sure the kid can answer that. Add in a mix of resentment of the school board telling them how exactly to do their jobs with helicopter parents. You end up with the shitstorm mess of 'no child left behind'.