Mal Education - System Design - Should Be VS Is

[shando] "I didn't see any Canadian addresses ..."

Search Wikipedia for the "List of Sudbury Schools" ... Scroll down to former schools.

Edmonton, Toronto, Wolfville.

<b>[shando] "There must be some interesting discussions"</b>

True. But actually I have trouble imagining ANY discussion at one of these campuses that is not interesting.

LB

<b>Progress IS being made!</b>

Did you read the November /13 issue of WIRED? There is an article, about the results of a different approach to education by a teacher in a poor Mexico school, called "Free Thinkers". Here are a few quotes:

The bottom line is, if youre not the one controlling your learning, youre not going to learn as well.

Jurez Correa felt a chill. He had never encountered a student with Palomas level of innate ability.

Our educational system is rooted in the industrial age. It values punctuality, attendance, and silence above all else.

Jurez Correa himself got almost no recognition, despite the fact that nearly half of his class had performed at a world- class level and that even the lowest performers had markedly improved.

These exams are like limits for the teachers, he says. They test what you know, not what you can do, and I am more interested in what my students can do.

Its a system that was constructed almost two centuries ago to meet the needs of the industrial age. Now that our society and economy have evolved beyond that era, our schools must also be reinvented.

Available on-line at:

www.wired.com/business/2013/10/free-thinkers/all/

<b>[shando] "Its a system that was constructed almost two centuries ago to meet the needs of the industrial age. Now that our society and economy have evolved beyond that era, our schools must also be reinvented."</b>

Yes, it was designed and constructed, all those years ago, to create the new replacement parts for the machine.

You and Jim are ganging up on me, aren't you? But that's OK, because you guys are mostly right and I mostly agree.

***

In a free and just society (hey, get off my back - I can dream, can't I?) such reinvention would happen <u>automatically</u> and it would happen <u>continuously</u>.

***

But here, in the real world, we have politicians[1].

Someday we (mankind) will find a way to make that not true.

Until then ...

LB

<ul>[1]
Their job, the thing we pay them to do, is to ensure that such Bad Things can almost never happen. And on those odd occasions when they do, we have the politicians around to make sure that these Bad New Things are destroyed as soon as possible.</ul>

So the problem evolved from a static training system making new parts for a system that no longer exists. Its not education. We have too many skilled workers trained for keeping the dead system running. Our pols and bankers are spending all our resources trying to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again and again. The new teaching is very small now and will take a while to catch on.

It will never catch on.

Until the politicians are gone.