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Post by gatordog on Jan 6, 2011 13:09:48 GMT -5
An extremely fascinating video on big thinking about the general problems with public education. This is very critical of the basis of our education system. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=player_embedded#! I believe any of you folks interested in school blogs will also find this fascinating. This speaker, with cartoonists help, covers things such as the enlightement & industrial revolutions, ADHD, kindegartners wonderful divergent thinking ability, our standardized school "factories" and so much more. Contrary to the way our education is set up, the speaker sees human capacity and how to promote human growth much different than the "cultural DNA" of our public education system. |
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Post by asmodeus on Jan 6, 2011 14:09:59 GMT -5
Very cool -- I would like to have seen some suggestions for alternative systems.
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Post by gatordog on Jan 6, 2011 15:18:50 GMT -5
Very cool -- I would like to have seen some suggestions for alternative systems. me too, I would have liked to heard followup suggestions. On thing that crossed my mind concerning alternative systems-- and this would be a challenge to supporters of public education--- is some version of homeschooling 'better paradigm' ? Or......religious education? For example, when the speaker talks about seeing human capacity differently, and not just churning out 'workers for the economy', many religious foundations certainly have different ideas of innate worth of each and every humans. But then again there are other religious cultures that may have just the opposite thinking and would be counter to the "waking up and enlightening" goal that the speaker is striving for. (Getting off maybe on philospical tangent here...) But still at its core, maybe the speaker is saying if public education realizes its a new world, a new age, and the there are large parts of our public education traditions, based on experiences from a hundred or more years ago, that are NOT working working now. For example, at the end he talks about teaching kids through collaboration and group efforts, not just off on your own. Or also, and this is a "gut-feeling" many of us have, give more emphasis on creativity and less on rote "standardization". but again asmo, it would be intriguing to learn about speakers followup alternative ideas. |
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Post by asmodeus on Jan 7, 2011 9:45:26 GMT -5
Unfortunately, it seems like a pipe dream that anything significant will change. We can't even get momentum for year-round schooling. The current schedule of having summers off is solely a matter of our agricultural origins where kids worked on farms, yet people (teachers primarily) don't want to let it go. I can't imagine getting support for stuff that's even more "radical." Perhaps home schooling or private/parochial schools are the answer.
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