Flickr Photo Courtesy: Lel4nd
Summer is an excellent time to assess, reflect and focus on classroom successes and failures from the previous year. It’s the last chance to hit the reset button before the fall semester begins. This summer, I find a consistent theme around me as I take a deep breath between school years. Whether the topic is on the radio, in a book I’m reading or on the agenda at a non-profit board retreat — it seems everyone is talking about a shift in classroom learning.
Based on what I’ve gathered so far, here are the central arguments from folks like Seth Godin and others studying curriculum trends:
1. Our current education system prepares students for a life spent “following directions”. This is great for “factory” life, not so great for society’s innovation (not to mention a person’s overall happiness).
2. The traditional way of “broadcast-style” teaching doesn’t resonate with the current crop of students who have 24/7 access to any information they could ever want or need. Collaboration and problem-solving are two imperative elements that must be fused into the curriculum.
So, where do we go from here? I’m not sure I have the answers either, but I’ll certainly keep searching. It’s something worth pondering in preparation for the fall semester.
Jill,
Great start… I would love to see education move towards a “learning appropriate” rather than the current “age appropriate” type of system. Remember the past when all the kids were in one room? there weren’t grades, as opposed to material used by learning appropriate groups. if the seven year old was learning math that the ten year old was jsut comprehending, they both sat together.
No one ostracized the ten year old, they came together as a group, and progressed as they needed/could. Today’s teachers’ unions have made learning into a production line, thereby creating the need for these types of environments. The “production line learning” of the past is so entrenched in today’s society, that unless we overthrow education czars, and union presidents, and a governor or two, we’ll be stuck in this mess till we become “one great world”….