Stop Stealing Dreams (the entire manifesto on the web), cleaned up HTML version - Stop ... - 89 views
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Feel free to read
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Amy Burvall on 30 Oct 12We will be reading this and highlighting and annotating with your thoughts. It will help you process the Cheating Scandal presentations as well as prepare you for the upcoming project on Rethinking Education. Please think about issue of knowledge and learning, as Mr. Godin asks the big question: What is School For?
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Dreams
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Dreams
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It wasn’t until 1918 that nationwide compulsory education was in place.
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It's shocking that education (semi) as we know it was established less than 100 years ago. Just a century ago, children took their first steps and went straight to work in the factories.
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It's so close to us !!! It's incredible how fast we're evolving, and yet we have so many points to improve - like child labor all around the world.
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i had no idea how much the system has developed since then!
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It's crazy how only a hundred years ago education was established and how rapidly things are changing.
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Large-scale education was not developed to motivate kids or to create scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system. Scale was more important than quality, just as it was for most industrialists.
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It's really interesting that school was not creating for the students' benefits, but to mold these growing children into what they want. I've never thought about the concept of school like this.
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This is sounding like 1984 : its all about training us to obey! It doesn't matter what we're learning to do ,as long as we're learning to do it how we're told to.
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Ok, but is there a way we can make it better ? It would be easy to stop going to school and not have all the negative part, but where would we get all the good stuff ?
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Like what I posted in Terrill's, we NEED a wider variety of classes so that we can find a passion. THAT is how we can make school better. Ex: Astronomy, Business, Engineering, Fashion, etc.
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Also, we need more field trips and hands-on experience
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It’s often difficult to see that when you’re in the middle of it.
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It's so true for so many things !
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In school kids don't seem to want to change things and stretch out into their own person because they have been trained to do the opposite, like stay in lines, and stay seated and be quiet. When a student is in the middle of the school system, and used to it, they will not stretch past the boundaries they have knows and grown up with.
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here is some money
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I think that money is a major problem of public and private schools...BUT if administrators were paid less or completely eliminated from schools. Maybe teachers should just elect other teachers as Principal and Vice prinispal.
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Should they be paid more than regular teachers then ?
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Administrators play a very important role in schools and i feel that eliminating them just to give more money to the teachers would prove more harm than good. On this note, teachers have so much on their plate as it is with grading, planning, and all their other responsibilities, i feel that adding the duties that come with being principle/VP would overload the teachers and eventually become too much for some. Teachers should stick to teaching, administrators to administrating. That's just my view, but i also see where you are coming from Zach, and it is a noteworthy opinion
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I agree that the leader of the school systems need to be elected, and should be more qualified than the normal teachers.
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I feel that teachers should get a decent amount of money because they are the ones who shape children into success.
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Our current system of teaching kids to sit in straight rows and obey instructions isn’t a coincidence—it was an investment in our economic future
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I still think kids are an investment in our economic future. If the future isn't educated they can't improve society like every generation has managed to do. You give your children an education and you expect some sort of return on that down payment of sorts. But thankfully a good investment isn't a docile and obedient generation anymore.
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I think that we should rethink this work ethic to be honest, yes it may enforce discipline, but is this really going to be like the "real world"?
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Is there any question that the first kind of job is worth keeping in our economy?
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The method doesn’t matter to me, the outcome does
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Mmm, I don't know... I actually believe the opposite : it's not what you do but the way you do it that counts.
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I agree with Iona but at the same time I feel as though what you do does count too. Just not as much as the way you do it...
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Both matter. Method is the entire structure and base of the outcome. Its like a painting. There needs to be a method and structure under the beautiful outcome.
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And yet our schools are churning out kids who are stuck looking for jobs where the boss tells them exactly what to do.
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It's crazy that they tell us that we're going to school so that we can get jobs. We think that we are being trained to have unique skills to do jobs and become irreplaceable workers, but it's really the opposite!
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never thought of it like that casey!
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We learn things that we might not even use for our job or in the real world. In class I get so frustrated over that. Why do we learn things that we dont even use when we grow up?
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School isn’t nearly as good at this as television is.
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we see ever more belief in unfounded theories
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Does he have any proof for this? I find it hard to believe that compulsory education INCREASES our belief in the irrational, especially as scientific study grows in depth and spread as time passes.
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Or maybe going more in depth with the scientific studies make people want to step aside and believe there is something else that is less concrete and calculated.
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It’s worth highlighting
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The school is supposed to be an underfunded processing facility, barely functioning, with bad behavior, questionable security and most of all, very little learning.
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Our mind has been comprised. We have been trained by movies to think that a normal school is "underfunded processing facility, barely functioning, with bad behavior, questionable security and most of all, very little learning." If we are supposed to "believe" in high school than why do they want us to look at high schools the way we do?
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As soon as we associate reading a book with taking a test, we’ve missed the point.
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What’s the right price to pay for this car?
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I think that we should courses that will help us prepare for the responsiblities of being an adult. I think that in high school we should learn how to write checks, how to pay taxes, how to purchase houses and cars and how to set up retierment plans, to buy and sell stocks ect.
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I think that we should courses that will help us prepare for the responsiblities of being an adult. I think that in high school we should learn how to write checks, how to pay taxes, how to purchase houses and cars and how to set up retierment plans, to buy and sell stocks ect.
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While the internet has allowed many of these changes to happen
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here are our expectations (very low)…
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The few with passion. The few who care.
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when students are given something they love they stick with it. where are all the students like that today?
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I think the problem is that schools do not offer as many classes as they can. For instance, how many schools have a robotics course? Or an Astronomy course? Schools are made to teach us the basics. However, they do not offer chances to find a career path, unless the path is in the basic areas. If people wanted to learn more about geology or astronomy or engineering, the have to wait until college or go out on their own. Schools need to offer a wider variety of courses to allow us to explore and to let us find something to stick with.
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(take kids out of work so we can teach them to become better factory workers as adults
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I completely agree with this comment. When you do something and you are not fully enthralled with it you tend to lose interest and drop it, but when you have something that you are passionate about you love doing it and you have the longing and drive to do more and excel and do the best you can at it.
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I completely agree! When you don't have your heart in something, it is often hard to motivate yourself to stick with it. I can definitely relate to this comment
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If school’s function is to create the workers we need to fuel our economy, we need to change school, because the workers we need have changed as well.
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The connection revolution is upon us
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We don’t need more of what schools produce when they’re working as designed.
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mass production
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proof that his heart was ultimately in the right place, the man who industrialized the public schools he created left us with this admonition, …be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. Unfortunately, that part of his curriculum is almost never taught in school.
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pointing out that it was an appropriate method to test only a tiny portion of what is actually taught and should be abandoned
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would find their calling, then find a mentor, and then learn their craft
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Jobs were invented before workers were invented
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not enough
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students leaning forward in their seats, choosing to pay attention
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It’s difficult to generalize about a population this big, but household incomes are less than half of what they are just a mile away, unemployment is significantly higher
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When we turn school into more than just a finishing school for a factory job, we enable a new generation to achieve things that we were ill-prepared for.
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This is very true. Most parents want this for their kids. They force their child to undergo their dreams, instead of their child following their own dreams. And that's why this generation hasn't really contributed in anything too revolutionary yet. Because they are put into a mindset where everyone succeeds and becomes successful in the same way. Graduating highschool and then graduating college. After that you get a good job, get married and buy a house. If all kids weren't subjected to this type of mindset maybe a child would create something new, something different for our generation.
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And when we give students the desire to make things, even choices, we create a world filled with makers.
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When we teach a child to love to learn, the amount of learning will become limitless.
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the only good reason to teach trig and calculus in high school is to encourage kids to become engineers and scientists.
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That's not a very good reason. Math should honestly stop by the time a student is in 8th grade, by then they should be able to realize weather they enjoy it enough where they would see themselves using it in a future job. If they do then they should take math in highschool, but if they don't it's a waste of time and students shouldn't be obliged to take it. If students must take a math class they should take a math class with material in it that they will actually need. CONSUMER MATH! Why do we barely touch on it when it's the thing we will be using so much when we are adults??
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I totally agree with you on this! We should decide if we want to contiune a career in math, we should also learn more about consumer math! This is the type of math that will be useful to us and is important to us! We keep learing about these silly math concepts like logs, quadratic functions, matrices ect... that we will never use when we are older, except if you want to be a math teacher or a career in math.
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A primary output of school should be to produce citizens who often choose the rational path. And that’s going to happen only if we’ve created enough situations for them to practice in.
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It’s a place where middle school football coaches have their players do push-ups until they faint, but math teachers are scolded for giving too much homework.
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We’re all going down the drain
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I totally agree with this, our generation is slowly starting to loose our grammar and English (at least for Americans). I actually tested this out and went to youtube and looked at several popular videos and music videos and I saw at least 4 of the 15 or so comments that appeared on the video were text "slang" (like instead of writing you, it says U). I think cell phones have contributed to this also because when you text, you want to abbreviate and be able to send a quick short message.
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How do we know that these schools are good
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This is really interesting. I never really thought of this until just now reading this. Why does everyone say that Harvard, Stanford and all these IVY league and private schools are sooooo goooood!?!? There are many schools around the country that offer the same courses and have the same schools (like pre med, pre law ect.) but what makes Stanford, Harvard and these other schools "so great?" Is it just because famous people have attended that school? What makes these IVY league and famous private schools so popular and have such a good reputation of being this really hard and good school?
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This is really interesting. I never really thought of this until just now reading this. Why does everyone say that Harvard, Stanford and all these IVY league and private schools are sooooo goooood!?!? There are many schools around the country that offer the same courses and have the same schools (like pre med, pre law ect.) but what makes Stanford, Harvard and these other schools "so great?" Is it just because famous people have attended that school? What makes these IVY league and famous private schools so popular and have such a good reputation of being this really hard and good school?
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And the flip side of this fear and conformity must be that passion will be destroyed.
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43. How not to teach someone to be a baseball fan
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So we should only be taught and seek information that we are passionate about? Or we should only find the "fun" information? It's easy to make the analogy while talking about baseball, but try to apply it to some actual school subjects. If kids only do what they're passionate about, we'll have a country full of adults, some of which can't multiply and some of which don't know the significance of 1776.
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learning is not done to you. Learning is something you choose to do
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what do you all think about this?
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I think that school is just one of the places where you get to learn. It might not be the most important one, but still, we shouldn't take it away. It would be just like closing a good book because it's not the answer to how the universe works.
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I think that this statement is very true. Even a lesson from the greatest teacher in the world could not make you learn a single thing unless you CHOSE to take the information in and learn it. I fully agree with this quote in that you and only you ultimately have the power to motivate yourself to chose the knowledge you want to learn
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I think that this is true. A stubborn person isn't going to retain the information that you're shoving down their throat! I think that the concept of learning is when you actually hold on to and understand the information presented to you, and you can't force that upon anyone.
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I totally agree with this. If I don't think something is useful or fun I totally tune it out. And if I'm adamantly opposed to learning something I have like a personal boycott by refusing to pay attention to it. I boycott things by daydreaming instead of doing the work, or doing the work wrong on purpose. I hardly ever do this. And when I do it's usually in math. But I haven't done this in years because math is usually like a fun puzzle.
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I think we all do choose to learn because if we didn't secretly want to learn then we wouldn't be learning, but because we do want to learn even the slightest bit we do learn things in school. We choose to learn. If we didn't, we wouldn't learn.
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I totally agree with this! Learning is what the leaner makes of it. The more effort you put in the more you get out of it. I think learning is a test for real life. Think about it the more you put in to life the more you get out of it.
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I agree with what is said here. I mean in reality we are really choosing to learn. We could easily sit in the back of the room and choose not to do anything or we could just not go to school at all because then we would be choosing not to learn. With all considered, choosing to learn is really up to all different kinds of situations. It comes down to money, time and whether or not if you want to actually learn at all.
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I agree with this. We go to school 5 times a week but that doesnt mean I learn everyday. It something you choose. You can choose to learn and take in the information. But you can choose not to pay attention and not learn what the teachers are teaching you
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I think that this is very accurate because in order for someone to learn something; they need to want to and need to try.
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If a person doesn't like the subject they will get distracted and will not pay attention, leading them to fall behind
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I totally agree! You choose to learn, if you are willing to learn, you learn. Learning is not done to you.
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I actually don't fully agree with this comment because in order to get a good grade in school, you have to pay attention to what is being taught so not learning in school isn't really an option. I suppose in hindsight you choose to study and get a good grade so I guess you choose whether or not you want to learn but you don't get to choose what to learn in school.
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I agree with this statement because people have to choose to learn something. If you are unwilling to learn a new skill then you will never learn it, but if you sit down and you really want to learn then you will not only learn that new skill, but you will learn it faster and have fun doing it.
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I think that's completely accurate! If you don't WANT to learn something, you're not going to. That's the bottom line. It's like you put up a barrier so that nothing is absorbed. You might be able to recall the information, or whatever it is, for a test but you won't remember it or be able to use it late on.
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Often overlooked in the rush to waste time at Facebook and YouTube is the fact that the Internet is the most efficient and powerful information delivery system ever developed.
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We need students who can learn how to learn, who can discover how to push themselves and are generous enough and honest enough to engage with the outside world to make those dreams happen
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Instead, our chaotic world is open to the work of passionate individuals, intent on carving their own paths.
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That’s the new job of school. Not to hand a map to those willing to follow it, but to inculcate leadership and restlessness into a new generation.
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how can we do this better? Ideas, anyone?
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I like having a map sometimes. Or at least some sort of guidelines. Not everyone can be just a big ball of fearlessness and ready to tackle any task that is put in front of them. Sometimes I would like someone to hold my hand and take me through the steps of something. I think being able to lead effectively is a useful skill, but some people are more comfortable or find more pleasure in doing what's put in front of them, and there shouldn't be anything wrong with that.
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I don't know about this idea... Personally I think of myself as more old fashion. I think that I like lectures more than I like this self taught learning. To me if something works don't change it, don't fix what ain't broke. My grandpa used to say that all the time! I don't think the school system is broken, it just is for the people who care.
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I think kids would be more passionate if they had more responsibility (less hand-holding) and if they were given access to all kinds of information (the internet) and given problems to solve--relevant, real-world problems that require thinking.
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I think that speech classes should be a top priority for schools all over the country. If we want to create leaders, that is the way to do it. Many people have great ideas. The problem is that many people do not know how to get the ideas to the public. Afterall, an idea is hardly an idea if nothing comes out of it.
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value is not created by increasing the productivity of those manufacturing a good or a service. Value is created by connecting buyers to sellers, producers to consumers, and the passionate to each other.
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n the connected world, reputation is worth more than test scores. Access to data means that data isn’t the valuable part; the processing is what matters.
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Great knowledge issue stated here! It's not about the info/data...it's about how you access it, interpret it, critique or analyze it, evaluate it, and use it. Are we doing this enough in school?
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It would be hard to study analysis more in depth in school, because we would get influenced by the others, and I don't know how we would make it objective enough.
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I think we do this a lot in school! We do this a lot on standerised tests! Which I think it is a pretty important thing to learn how to interpret graphs because you do that in the real word.
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The answer to this is really a double edged sword. Sometimes we are evaluating and putting our knowledge to work too much. We might end up just doing busy work and it will not help us at all in the long run. While in some classes we barely use the knowledge we learn. We don't really interpret what we are given, we are just doing it to just get it over with. So all in all, I think we need to really do more of this in most of our classes but also take a away a little in other classes.
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I think IB is all about this because we have to do more than just memorize information, we have to apply it to unknown situations as well as make connections to other subjects, units, or even things outside of school.
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Group projects are the exception in school, but they should be the norm. Figuring out how to leverage the power of the group—whether it is students in the same room or a quick connection to a graphic designer across the sea in Wales—is at the heart of how we are productive today.
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At LJA do you think we do enough collaborative work? What are some major issues that arise with collaborative or "group" projects? Is this a good way to assess your learning?
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I hate group projects because it usually only assesses the knowledge of one or two people in the group. But I know that is it necessary because that's how the real world works. But I think there is a difference between collaboration and group projects - a collaborated work could still be assessed on every individuals contribution? I consider collaboration more where everyone contributes, but that's not always true for group projects.
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I personally don't like collaborative work because I think that, for the most part, it isn't collaborative or a decent assessment of what anyone in the group knows. I think that though teachers often assign groups to prevent people goofing off with their friends, if we were allowed to choose groups, we would work with people who we know well and are willing to split the work evenly with.
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Not everything is collaborative. I like reading alone. I like doing studio work in art alone. I like writing alone. I like thinking alone. I really enjoy doing things alone, and it's really satisfying doing something completely independently. Sure, we should learn how to cooperate with people, but it's not a good way to assess your knowledge, but it's a good way to assess how well you can work with others.
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The big problem with collaborative work is that there is rarely enough collaboration. The tasks are just split up without discussion, making it less work for everyone. Or, the other case, one member does everything while their group members just latch on and take some of the credit for the work produced. In my opinion, collaborative work is good when it works, but it often doesn't go the way everyone plans.
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I think we do enough collaborative work. I think sometimes one person does all the work and everybody else gets credit. I don't think this is a very good way of assessing a single person's learning. It doesn't really work that well in my opinion.
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I think it has to much, if school projects with others are done correctly there needs to be something that ensures everyone does a large amount of work. I hate group projects because I end up doing all the work.
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I think in certain subjects like tok or environmental systems, we have enough collaborative work, but in classes like English and Biology we do not. I think group projects is not a good way to assess your learning but rather it teaches you how to deal with a group, and you cannon t assess this accurately unless you see everything that happens in the group which is not possible.
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I personally like "group projects" because I only see or think about stuff a certain way when others might have another perspective. I think that more than one head is better than one. I dont think it should be the norm because those free loaders wont participate. Some times you should do projects on your own because you cant always work in a group and you should learn to do stuff by yourself. At lja i think we have a good amount of collaborative group work. Group projects by yourself is a better way to assess your learning because the project is all YOUR work. Group projects is a little harder to assess your learning because ts a group so who knows if you actually worked on it.
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We do a lot more group work at LJA than we did at any other school that I've been at...When you're working on group projects, it seems like its only beneficial when all the other group members are contributing, which doesn't happen all the time...but I guess in the "real world" this is what working in a job is like. There are always freeloaders and you have to get used to it...so even though it might affect your grade if the other people in your group are freeloading and not accurately represent your personal knowledge the point of the task shouldn't be to get a good grade. but to learn and collaborate and succeed
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The bottom of the pyramid stores the students, with teachers (middle managers) following instructions from their bosses.
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How can we empower students (and teachers) more? Ideas?
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We should have the power of impeachment or vetoing or some democratic control over the administration of schools!
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Maybe more flexibility in the curriculum, or types of projects and assessments? If teachers are just taught what is being handed down to them, what they aren't interested in, it will undoubtedly have an impact on the amount they are able to interest the students.
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We can't. There's a system in place for a reason. It keeps things less chaotic.
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I really think to ensure that the administrators don't get in the way they should all be fired. I think that each school should elect a prinicipal and vice principal and they should be elected by the teachers. They should serve a one year term. This would really help get more money to the students and get rid of the the administration that gets in the way.
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A way to empower people is to give them new and important experiences. With new experiences you learn and improve your skills. For example, in a store you have many things: how to work a register, stacking foods, and bagging. With all of these different tasks comes power. Therefore to empower students and/or teachers we need to give them skills and new experiences.
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We can give the students more independent projects and things that we are passionate about and create responsibilities for the students in a way that they think that they are significant
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Not what a patron would say to a talented artist, though.
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I like this analogy using the artist/patron. What if we treated all students as artists and teachers/schools acted as patrons or even "masters" in the Renaissance connotation of the word?
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No I really don't like this idea. Like I said above I think you really shouldn't fix something that isn't broken. They only thing I would change about schools is firing the administrators.
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the only people who excel are those who have decided to do so. Great doctors or speakers or skiers or writers or musicians are great because somewhere along the way, they made the choice.
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what do you think about this statement?
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I think that people need to be motivated in all they do. If you're not motivated and passionate, you won't excel in that particular field. I don't think you're going to be a famous author if you don't want to be because they won't try. People can be rich by inheritance, but only who actually desire to go places can get there. I guess you can be dragged along for the ride, but in my idealistic view that doesn't happen.
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I think that there are many external factors that play into what a person will excel in: parents, teachers, natural ability, resources available, etc. A person can make a choice to try to excel and fail, or perhaps excel without really trying.
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I think it's true. And I think forcing the choice upon us is making even the committed ones hate it! Forcing yes would of course make everyone choose no - maybe we should try reverse psychology instead?
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I feel like a lot of people who are successful are the people who work really hard. Not necessarily the smartest or most talented, but those with the most drive and ambition to be something more than average. I wouldn't call it a "choice" persay, more like a lifestyle or a personality trait.
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Unconditionally true ! If you have the will to do it, you're the only one who can stop you.
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I disagree with this statement. It goes back to the classic "Nature vs. Nurture" argument because some people just aren't gifted enough to have "smart genes" in their DNA. It's not completely up to each person whether they are smart or not. Granted, you do have to persevere and push yourself, but that is not the only criterion of being smart.
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I think this is semi true. A majority of the people that are the greatest are the greatest because they chose to and worked towards that goal. Some people just can't though like disabled people and it may be impossible for them to do so. Aside from people where it may be impossible for them to be like the greatest speaker example because they are mute. But for everyone else. The greatest ones are the ones who made the choice to be great and to work towards this.
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I do not full agree with this statement for a few reasons. 1) Sometimes people do not decided to excel in something, they just might have the skill. Like when you can sing, you are usually born with the voice to sing with; and your not just deciding that you can sing. 2) I also think you have to look at in the other way too. Some people decide that they want to be really good at something but they can't. No matter what they do, they will never excel in what they want. This is because somethings you cannot teach; somethings just come to someone.
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I think that for the most part this statement is completely true. People who believe and want to excel, and put forth the effort to do so will excel. If there is a person who merely just wants to excel yet does nothing to actually excel, well, then they won't. In order to achieve what you would like to achieve and improve where you want to improve, you have to put forth some effort and make the choice to do so.
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As the industrial age peters out, as the growth fades away, the challenge is this: training creative, independent, and innovative artists is new to us. We can’t use the old tools, because resorting to obedience to teach passion just isn’t going to work.
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given that, how should we change? What would be some interesting new courses? What skills should we teach?
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I think that courses should be more focused on critical thinking skills....and maybe on making connections between disciplines. I think that many of the "traditional school" conventions should remain.
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I think that we need some courses that will be helpful for everyone, like economics and maybe a consumer math class (about how to write checks, how you pay for a car, loans, 401 K's; retierment funds, ect....) Because when you become an adult, there are a lot of important responsibilities that come with it and you want to live stress free life and not have to worry about not being able to afford to buy a house, or pay taxes.
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Passion isn't something you can teach. Passion has to be felt by each person individually. I don't believe we can teach a class, no matter how badly we want to, to students to become passionate about a certain subject.
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I feel that in school we should definitely add some new classes or maybe just change the curriculum for certain ones. For example, I really like Cori's idea on adding consumer math to the curriculum because in truth, most of the things we learn in math 90% of us won't use after we graduate schooling. I think that and other skills that would aid us in later life should definitely be added into our curriculum somehow.
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I feel like we as students should only learn the skills that will be needed for our future. For example: I want to teach history so why should I have to learn how to find an inverse function? If we let children explore the different careers to find what interests them we can better plan the courses they should take. This can also be a problem because as humans, we tend to change our minds.
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Our school should teach skills that are needed for the future. And have one month where every class is about a different program or skill and then after that month each student studies and learns one of the options. this is better than trying to get a student to be really good at something in a really short time period (design tech).
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I feel that we DEFINITELY need to learn or have courses on the way politics work, we need to non biass information to prepare us to vote and so we will actually be able to understand what the heck the rest of the world is talking about. I also think that we need a economics course, where they teach us how to finance, do taxes, ect.
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The obligation of the new school is to teach reasonable doubt. Not the unreasonable doubt of the wild-eyed heckler, but the evidence-based doubt of the questioning scientist and the reason-based doubt of the skilled debater.
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We can teach kids to engage in poetry, to write poetry, and to demand poetry—or we can take a shortcut and settle for push-pin, YouTube, and LOLcats.
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Can risk-taking be taught?
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When's the last time you took a big risk? What did you learn? Did someone teach you to take risks?
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I don't know if 'teaching' is the appropriate word. There's a certain combination of what the people around you say, what they do, what you see them doing, that makes you want to take a risk once in a while. No 'risk-takers' lessons.
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I think that risk-taking isn't something that is taught by teachers. I think that the type of parents we have or the type of peer group we have are what determines what types of risks we are willing to take.
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I don't think that risk-taking can be taught because it's up to the personality of the person. It can be forced that the students take a risk, but schools can't demand that because it's taking a risk.
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I was in Japan. It was dark outside. I was in Machida, in the park across the street from the church where we were staying. We had been playing link tag with a group of Japanese girls, and everyone was heading back to the church. I was bringing up the rear of our group, and I saw two college age joggers sitting on the playground. "Konbanwa," I said. They laughed and responded "hello". I guess my accent gave me away. Later, I was standing outside of the church talking with some shy people. I saw the joggers jogging by. I said "hello" and they laughed, and somehow (I have no idea how) I started a conversation with them. I ended up bringing them into the church and they ended up eating with us and staying until 9:00. Before I brought them in, I didn't know these people. At all. I have no fear of people or strangers, but even I have to admit that that was a big risk. No one single person taught me to take risk--it was a combination of people at church, Pastor Frank, Annelise...a lot of leaders and students from church advocate for audacity. From that experience I learned that pulling random people off the street is a good idea.
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I really do not think that risk-taking can be taught to someone. You are either born being an introvert or an extrovert. As an introvert you do not really want to take chances because you are shy. While an extrovert would be willing to take risks because they do not really care what people think of them; they put themselves out there, ready for anything.
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I'm not much of a risk taker however I was raised to do so. My father raised me to believe that we must to risks to get what we truly want. I risk something, big or small, everyday. I'm taking a big risk now for a drama project. Everyday is a risk that must be taken.
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To me, risk taking is not something that someone can teach you. Risk taking is something you do by nature. Risk taking is when you are willing to put your neck on the line and go out there and be different. The last time I took a big risk it ended really well for me. I learned that if you step out and help out other people, not only will they be rewarded but you will to. Not in a physical way, but sometimes in a mental way.
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Im not sure what. But for risk taking you learn you boundaries. You learn how far you can push yourself. And taking risks can lead to something amazing. Most famous scientists, artists, etc. took risks with their work.
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Education isn’t a problem until it serves as a buffer from the world and a refuge from the risk of failure.
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It would be a mistake to say that scientific education doesn’t work. It does work. It creates what we test. Unfortunately, the things we desperately need (and the things that make us happy) aren’t the same things that are easy to test.
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what do you think about this statement? What are some things we need and that make us happy that are virtually impossible to test?
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I disagree with this statement partially because what makes you happy changes between people. The same thing that makes one person happy doesn't necessarily make someone else happy. What I'm trying to say is that scientific education can make people happy and that is completely testable.
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The good jobs of the future aren’t going to involve working for giant companies on an assembly line. They all require individuals willing to chart their own path, whether or not they work for someone else.
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The jobs of the future are in two categories: the downtrodden assemblers of cheap mass goods and the respected creators of the unexpected.
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few who figure out how to be linchpins and artists. People who are hired because they’re totally worth it, because they offer insight and creativity and innovation that just can’t be found easily.
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n artist is someone who brings new thinking and generosity to his work, who does human work that changes another for the better.
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The only way out is going to be mapped by those able to dream.
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The Internet is making the role of content gatekeeper unimportant. Redundant. Even wasteful.
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What we do need is someone to persuade us that we want to learn those things, and someone to push us or encourage us or create a space where we want to learn to do them better.
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Thinking about thinking...how can teachers persuade you why you want to learn something, and then help you to be more self-directed?
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I don't think that there is an easy solution to make someone WANT to learn something if they don't have a natural inclination towards it besides the occasional "fun" activities which either aren't any fun or don't teach very much. The system we have now isn't by any means perfect, but we can't just say "we need someone to persuade us to want to learn" without giving any possible way how.
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I recently found this article about keeping people's attention in class, and it actually relates very closely to this question. Enjoy! http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-keep-someones-attention-2012-8
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thanks Nichole!
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maybe if teachers had to persuade us, more students would have a better idea of what direction they want to go in life after school.
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I wouldn’t want to live in an uneducated world. I truly believe that education makes humans great, elevates our culture and our economy, and creates the foundation for the engine that drives science which leads to our well being. I’m not criticizing education.
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No. But I am wondering when we decided that the purpose of school was to cram as much data/trivia/fact into every student as we possibly could.
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aggressively testing for trivia.
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Computers changed that. Now the receptionist can’t lose your messages, because they go straight into voice mail. The assembly-line worker can’t drop a tool, because it’s attached to a numerically controlled machine. The telemarketer who interrupts your dinner is unlikely to over-promise, because the pitch is carefully outlined in script form on paper.
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LEGO isn’t the problem, but it is a symptom of something seriously amiss. We’re entering a revolution of ideas while producing a generation that wants instructions instead.
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Make something different
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Jeremy Gleick, a sophomore at UCLA, has devoted precisely an hour a day to learning something new and unassigned.
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Available resources and instruction have gone from scarce to abundant in less than a decade, and the only barrier to learning for most young adults in the developed world is now merely the decision to learn.
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Think of the art we haven’t seen, the jobs that haven’t been created, and the productivity that hasn’t been imagined because generations have been persuaded not to dream big.
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creative jobs lead to more creative jobs. Self-starting, self-reliant, initiative-taking individuals often start new projects that need new workers
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short and brutish
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These students are trained to dream small dreams.
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do you agree with this?
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Yes. We are told to dream big, but then we constantly have our dreams challenged. We are told to never say "I can't do it," but they say we shouldn't. Dreams are dreams. I think the older we get, the more we forget about the dreams we had when we were little. The silly dreams that we really believed in, with all our hearts. The common mindset is "the older we get, the more serious we become. The smaller our dreams get."
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Semi. Teachers sometimes shut down your dreams or adults shut down your dreams because they say it is unrealistic. So your dreams become smaller more realistic dreams
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I don't believe what you dream can be trained. Dreams are the only thing we can keep personal anymore and can be but are not always affect by others.
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most students have small aspirations while those who dream big and can achieve are the ones who will be successful.
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Students may be trained to "dream small dreams," but we are capable of doing anything we desire. If we want to dream big dreams then we can. Dreaming big is what keeps some people going. It helps them see that light at the end of the tunnel and that there is something that they can reach for. It's a goal that they can set. By dreaming small dreams you are setting yourself back, your holding yourself back from achieving greater things. I agree with this post, but I also think it's wrong.
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Dreamers don’t have special genes. They find circumstances that amplify their dreams
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As knowledge becomes networked, the smartest person in the room isn’t the person standing at the front lecturing us, and isn’t the collective wisdom of those in the room. The smartest person in the room is the room itself: the network that joins the people and ideas in the room, and connects to those outside of it
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knowledge is becoming inextricable from—literally unthinkable without—the network that enables it
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notion that each of us can assemble a network (of people, of data sources, of experiences) that will make us either smart or stupid
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only way for a student to get respect inside the system of school is to earn temporary approval from a teacher he won’t likely see again any time soon
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have you ever felt like this?
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Not really. Because I go to a small school with teachers who genuinely seem to care about the students, I don't feel like I need to strategically win anyone over. The relationships forged with teachers at this school are legitimately enjoyable ones. Although when I went to Kahuku which was a much, much larger school I didn't really care for the teachers because they didn't really seem to be able to differentiate me from anyone else. Although I didn't feel any pressure to earn their approval. They were just doing their job and I was doing mine.
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I have felt like this. When you see a teacher once a week, for example, it is easier to please or get some sort of approval because you don't really know the teacher and the teacher doesn't know the student.
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yet a cable TV–inoculated audience wants everything dumbed down to the Kardashian level.
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If we spend more time training inquisitive humans, we’ll have to give up on the basics, and that will mean nothing but uneducated dolts who don’t even know who Torquemada was.”
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I’m concerned about fact ignorance and history ignorance and vocabulary ignorance. I’m petrified, though, about attitude ignorance.
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If we teach our students to be passionate, ethical, and inquisitive, I’m confident that the facts will follow.
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Users type “Google” into Bing to get to Google so they can do a search (the very search they could have done in Bing, of course). And then, when they get to Google, one of the most popular terms? Facebook.
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They self-describe as Dummies and give up, not for lack of genetic smarts, but for lack of initiative and because of an abundance of fear.
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The bad decisions we see every day aren’t the result of lack of data, or lack of access to data.
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No, they’re the result of a schooling culture that is creating exactly what it set out to create. Along the way, we teach students to be open to and trusting of marketing messages
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The way we save the written word, intellectual discourse, and reason is by training kids to care.
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should sell students on why.
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should every course start out with a unit on "Why should we study this?"
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YES I do. Every year in basically every class there is also at least one student who asks the teacher, "Why do we have to learn about this? How will this help us in life?" It is because of this that I think units should start out with a brief description of why the students are learning about that particular thing in school. Knowing that we will later use it in life makes us want to pay attention that much more.
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matters is that motivation is the only way to generate real learning, actual creativity, and the bias for action that is necessary for success.
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contact lenses hooked up to the Internet.
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skill of memorizing a fact for twelve hours (and then forgetting it) is not only useless, it’s insane.
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synthesize complex ideas and to invent new concepts is far more useful than drill and practice
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What we can’t do, though, is digitize passion. We can’t force the student to want to poke around and discover new insights online.
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Find the best homework questions ever devised and create world-class tutorials in how to solve each one
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When we free access to information from the classroom setting, the leverage of the great teacher goes way up
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Mostly I’ve tried to point out to people that the very things we assumed to be baseline truths were in fact fairly recent inventions and unlikely to last much longer.
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I’m arguing that the connection revolution sets the table for a return of emotional labor. For the first time in a century, we have the opportunity to let digital systems do work while our teachers do labor.
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Isn’t it interesting that the movies we love about sports always feature the dark horse who dreams, the underdog who comes off the bench and saves the day?
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In Hansen’s estimation, it’s easy for natural gifts to escape the notice of people who aren’t focused on finding them and amplifying them.
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raise a generation of math hackers, literature hackers, music hackers and life hackers?
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Leadership isn’t something that people hand to you. You don’t do followership for years and then someone anoints you and says, “here.” In fact, it’s a gradual process, one where you take responsibility years before you are given authority.
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the only thing holding us back is the status quo (and our belief in the permanence of status).
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School serves a real function when it activates a passion for lifelong learning
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Your work is worth more than mere congruence to an answer key
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Fitting in is a short-term strategy, standing out pays off in the long run
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Will the next generation know more facts than we do, or will it be equipped to connect with data, and turn that data into information and leadership and progress?
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School is at its best when it gives students the expectation that they will not only dream big, but dream dreams that they can work on every day until they accomplish them—not because they were chosen by a black-box process, but because they worked hard enough to reach them.
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The challenge is that the connected economy demands people who won’t hide, and it punishes everyone else. Standing out and standing for something are the attributes of a leader, and initiative is now the only posture that generates results.
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If the dream is huge, we get applause from our peers and our teachers, but are able to hide out because, of course, the dream is never going to come true
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We need more brave artists, too, and some poets. We need leaders and people passionate enough about their cause to speak up and go through discomfort to accomplish something. Can these skills be taught or amplified?
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reading and writing remain the two skills that are most likely to pay off with exponential results.
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When we associate reading with homework and tests, is it any wonder we avoid it?
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The effective writer in the connected revolution can see her ideas spread to a hundred or a million people. Writing (whether in public, now that everyone has a platform, or in private, within organizations) is the tool we use to spread ideas.
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Katherine did what so many kids are capable of doing, but aren’t expected to do.
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how to figure things out and make them happen
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Because we can see whom you know and what they think of you, because we can see how you’ve used the leverage the Internet has given you, because we can see if you actually are able to lead and actually are able to solve interesting problems—because of all these things, college means something new now.
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The definition of “best” is under siege.
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The more applicants they reject, the higher they rank in U.S. News and other rankings. And thus the rush to game the rankings continues, which is a sign that the marketers in question (the colleges) are getting desperate for more than their fair share. Why bother making your education more useful if you can more easily make it appear to be more useful?
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we’re about to see significant cracks in old-school schools with mass-market degrees.
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Back before the digital revolution, access to information was an issue. The size of the library mattered. One reason to go to college was to get access. Today, that access is worth a lot less. The valuable things people take away from college are interactions with great minds (usually professors who actually teach and actually care) and non-class activities that shape them as people.
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Things like gap years, research internships, and entrepreneurial or social ventures after high school are opening doors for students who are eager to discover the new
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How to be usefully wrong.
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If failure is not an option, then neither is success.
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We can (and must) teach these skills, starting with kids who are happy to build towers out of blocks (and watch them fall down) and continuing with the students who would never even consider buying a term paper to avoid an essay in college.
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It’s essential that the school of the future teach music. The passion of seeing progress, the hard work of practice, the joy and fear of public performance—these are critical skills for our future.
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Real learning happens when the student wants (insists!) on acquiring a skill in order to accomplish a goal.
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When access to information was limited, we needed to load students up with facts. Now, when we have no scarcity of facts or the access to them, we need to load them up with understanding.
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What if we put 80 percent of that effort into making huge progress in teaching every kid to care, to set goals, to engage, to speak intelligently, to plan, to make good decisions, and to lead?
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Textbooks rarely teach us lessons we long remember. We learn about self-reliance when we get lost in the mall, we learn about public speaking when we have to stand up and give a speech.
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If you could add just one course Neil deGrasse Tyson, astronomer and head of the Museum of Natural History in New York, adds this one: “How to tell when someone else is full of it.” I’d augment that with: “And how to tell when you are.”
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Other topics that are just like computer programming
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Shepard Fairey,
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And being cared about, connected with, and pushed is the platform we need to do the emotional heavy lifting of committing to learn.
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our responsibility is to amplify drive, not use lack of talent as a cheap excuse for our failure to nurture dreams
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Let’s define dumb as being different from stupid. Dumb means you don’t know what you’re supposed to know. Stupid means you know it but make bad choices.
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Today, dumb is a choice, one that’s made by individuals who choose not to learn. If you don’t know what you need to know, that’s fixable. But first you have to want to fix it.
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Give me a motivated block builder with a jumbled box of Legos over a memorizing drone any day. If we can’t (or won’t, or don’t want to) win the race to the bottom, perhaps we could seriously invest in the race to the top.
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Because we’re in such a hurry to drill and practice the techniques on the SAT or Regents exam, we believe we don’t have time to have students spend a week to independently invent the method of completing the square.
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“what did you figure out today?”
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Is the memorization and drill and practice of advanced math the best way to sell kids on becoming scientists and engineers? If not, then let’s fix it.
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Is there a better way to learn than by doing?
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Davidson doesn’t use term papers in her class—instead, she has created a series of blog assignments as well as a rotating cast of student leaders who interact with each and every post. Her students write more, write more often, and write better than the ones down the hall in the traditional “churn it out” writing class. She is teaching her students how to learn, not how to be perfect.
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It doesn’t matter if you’re able to do high-level math or analyze memes over time. If you’re unable or unwilling to build bridges between the real world and those symbols, you can’t make an impact on the world.
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The shift now is this: school used to be a one-shot deal, your own, best chance to be exposed to what happened when and why. School was the place where the books lived and where the experts were accessible.
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Want to watch a movie? Netflix is a better librarian, with a better library, than any library in the country. The Netflix librarian knows about every movie, knows what you’ve seen and what you’re likely to want to see. If the goal is to connect viewers with movies, Netflix wins.
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Wikipedia and the huge databanks of information have basically eliminated the library as the best resource for anyone doing amateur research (grade school, middle school, even undergrad)
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They need a librarian more than ever (to figure out creative ways to find and use data). They need a library not at all.
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ost-Gutenberg, books are finally abundant, hardly scarce, hardly expensive, hardly worth warehousing. Post-Gutenberg, the scarce resources are knowledge and insight, not access to data.
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The next library is filled with so many Web terminals that there’s always at least one empty. And the people who run this library don’t view the combination of access to data and connections to peers as a sidelight—it’s the entire point.
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If we view the purpose of college as a stepping stone, one that helps you jump the line while looking for a good job, then a famous college is the way to go. The line for those good jobs is long, and a significant benefit of a famous college is more than superstition—associating with that fame may get you a better first job.
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Access to information is not the same as education
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Stanford University has put up many of their courses online for free, and some have more than 30,000 active students at a time.
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A university delivers four things: Access to information (not perspective or understanding, but access) Accreditation/A scarce degree Membership in a tribe A situation for growth (which is where you’d file perspective and understanding)
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Given that all the major universities ought to/should/will create a university of the people—giving access to information and great teachers to all (and if they don’t, someone should and will, soon)—which of the other three really matter?
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The best way to complain is to make things”
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if you don’t underestimate me, I won’t underestimate you
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Higher ed is going to cha
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It’s not surprising that early on, many teachers found support in unions.
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The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake
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Obedient
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The current structure, which seeks low-cost uniformity that meets minimum standards, is killing our economy, our culture, and us.
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Our culture has a dreaming problem.
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Access to any course, anywhere in the world
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“it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”
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Is it too risky to do the right thing?
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School needs to put us on the spot.
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Harlem is a big place, bigger than most towns in the United States.
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Dreamers can be impatient, unwilling to become well-rounded, and most of all, hard to fit into existing systems.
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I strongly disagree with this statement. Dreamers are willing to do whatever it takes to reach their goals, and therefore they are willing to put in work. To work towards something, a result, may require a lot of patience. A dreamer will find that patience and make their dream a reality. As for being a well-rounded individual, I don't see how chasing dreams affects that area at all.
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A million movies have trained us about what to expect from a school in East Harlem.
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help them memorize something that someone else could look up, it’s time wasted
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And yet… most of us wing it. We make the same mistakes that many who came before us do, and we shy away from the hard (but incredibly useful) work of getting better at the things that matter.
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Don’t wait for it. Pick yourself. Teach yourself.
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Now that we’ve built an industrial solution to teaching in bulk, we’ve seduced ourselves into believing that the only thing that can be taught is the way to get high SAT scores. We shouldn’t be buying this.
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It’s diffic
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ociety is being fundamentally changed by the impact of the internet and the connection economy.
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With the invention of the internet, humans have come to rely on looking something up, rather than finding the information for themselves. The impact of the internet has created a generation of humans that are very lazy; because we are able to do pretty much everything without even getting out of a seat.
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Mass production desires to produce mass
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were invented before w
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g Dreams
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passionate
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If this sounds parallel to the notion of factories producing items in bulk, of interchangeable parts, of the notion of measurement and quality, it’s not an accident.
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“The best way to complain is to make things”
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This quote is pretty awesome and I think its true. People tend to listen more if you actually have some work and creativity in your complaints. Like Banksy, making art about problems in society. I think satire is also a good way to complain about things. It gets people's attention. The point of complaining is to highlight the problem. Then we have to do something about it.
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values customization
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This reminds me of the customization of technology that we have and how people can set their desktop background and bookmark things and have their own accounts on pretty much everything. Everything is customizable and when things are more customizable, people become more attached to them, I think, and value them more. So customizing school could only be a good thing. There is something about everyone learning the same thing, though, that builds community (albeit not a very divers one...).
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Being surrounded by educated people makes democracy stronger
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Being surrounded by educated people makes democracy stronger
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Being surrounded by educated people makes democracy stronger
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If the goal was to raise the standards for rational thought, skeptical investigation, and useful decision making, we’ve failed for most of our citizens.
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Goal-setting
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be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
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…be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
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…be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
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…be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
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"Low-wage kids were taking jobs away from hard-working adults." Before, kids would work with a low- wage, and now are receiving education to work for a higher pay. This demonstrates how there are sooo much changes that occur throughout time. Adults used were insensed and intimitated from kids working for a low- wage (child labor) as kids were taking over jobs, but now it is more reliant on education and not age groups.
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The world has changed, of course. It has changed into a culture fueled by a market that knows how to mass-customize, to find the edges and the weird, and to cater to what the individual demands instead of insisting on conformity.
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Dreams
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handy PDF
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go do your best
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In our society, people in stereotypical towns like Harlem, think that the schools are bad and poor. The amount of teachers are low, money to fund the schools is "not enough" and "our expectations are very low". And when society says that, they still want us to believe that the students can do/try their best. How can the students do their best if there is no hope in the schools? Why would they in the first place?
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To train people to become productive workers.