I have just read a section of Tony Wagner's and Ted Dintersmith's book Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era. In this short section of a discussion of K-12 schools, after their outline of elementary and secondary subjects and the changes they propose in our methods of operation and focus, the authors wonder if a new kind of course might be more effective. Rather than breaking down each subject into its own 20- or 40-minute time block, they propose blending subjects the way we confront them in "real" life.
I concur. In fact, when I submitted my application for the Missouri Teacher of the Year in 2004, I stated as much. Recently, in my application for a four-day residency scholarship to George Washington's Mount Vernon, I reworded my statement.
I concur. In fact, when I submitted my application for the Missouri Teacher of the Year in 2004, I stated as much. Recently, in my application for a four-day residency scholarship to George Washington's Mount Vernon, I reworded my statement.
When my teacher-peers curiously peek through the window or observe my class at work, they realize life is not divided into isolated topics, changing every 20 minutes and breaking on a regular schedule. Life is multi-dimensional and transcendent. When we surround ourselves with exciting, real-life situations, we shatter the traditional mold of school. We time travel!
That may sound good, but in all honesty, it's more of a goal than the way we actually conduct ourselves in Room 404. I will never feel as if I have arrived, as if I have become the teacher I truly wish I could be. But that's the hazard of viewing education through an artist's lens.
Wagner and Dintersmith say this:
Wagner and Dintersmith say this:
Our choice is stark. We can continue training kids to be proficient at low-level routine tasks and to memorize content they won't remember on topics they'll never use. Or we can embrace the reality that much of what school is about today can be "outsourced" to a smartphone, freeing up time for kids to improve in challenges...
That, too, sounds good, but it will never be good if we can't right the educational ship. Too much of what we teach has been for the test or for a series of tests that only evaluate basic facts and not actual thinking.
So here's the beautiful list. It's not Common Core; it's more along the lines of common sense.
So here's the beautiful list. It's not Common Core; it's more along the lines of common sense.
Learning how to learn |  |
Each of these could be its own chapter in another book. Suffice it to say that for years many of these concepts have been, in the authors' words, "schooled out" of graduates. Yet these are the exact concepts we should nurture! Failing such will do this instead:
[Y]ou produce disengaged kids doing the most mind-numbing of tasks, rather than developing the skills they'll need to take on life's biggest challenges.
If that's not sobering to stakeholders, I don't know what is.
