Group items tagged

“Instead, we should be concentrating on making them truly knowledge-able. Imagination and curiosity are the heart of that idea; if we have those qualities, learning becomes joyous.”

It takes time to gather the group together (and depending on the issue, this could be a large group). It takes a great deal of effort to create a mechanism in which the individuals are able to participate in meaningful dialogue. Sincerely listening to the stakeholders, coming up with common language and reference points to determine the current state of affairs, the desired state, and benchmarks to determine progress towards the ideal requires an open mind and genuine curiosity. Valuing where people are coming from and harmonizing this with a destination where they may be less comfortable going to takes a special set of skills. Smoothing over the inevitable bumps in the process involves copious amounts of patience and composure. Staying the course and slowing the process down when the stakeholders may wish to charge ahead takes perseverance. Following up to ensure that everyone is satisfied that they have been heard and taking the time to celebrate successes requires a commitment to the entire process.

Have we reached the limits of our traditional school system's capacity to deal with the diversity of learners that come into our schools today?

To do this we need to shift our thinking from a goal that focuses on the delivery of something -- a primary education -- to a goal that is about empowering our young people to leverage their innate and natural curiosity to learn whatever and whenever they need to. The goal is about eliminating obstacles to the exercise of this right -- whether the obstacle is the structure and scheduling of the school day, the narrow divisions of subject, the arbitrary separation of learners by age, or others -- rather than supplying or rearranging resources. The shift is extremely powerful...

We can see an emerging crisis in our schools, while, on the other hand, we see a renaissance for learning. The question then simply becomes: would a completely different perspective that builds on the latter, be a more productive focus for us than the continued, largely unproductive, public debate around the former?