the right answer

“Your work is worth more than mere congruence to an answer key” – I stole that line from Seth Godin (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/).  What does it mean? School teaches us to search for and value the ANSWER.  It’s all about right answers. “How many did you get right?”….. “How many did you get wrong?” School was always [...]

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you can’t teach that

There are so many things that traditional schools try to “teach” that simply can’t be taught. You can’t “teach peace” or “tolerance”, for example.  You can develop a “curriculum unit” around these, have stories and talk about peace/tolerance, make cross-words and word-finds and other “fun tools” (yes, let’s never forget that it needs to be [...]

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the working life

If you consider how complex modern society is it’s easy to see why people don’t understand the reality of work.  It’s easy to see why at first glance maybe dreaming of the day when “no one has to work”, or maybe just a little, isn’t so far fetched.  And who knows, maybe we’ll get there.  [...]

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that’s not my size

There are very few “one size fits all” things in life.  And even the ones that kind-of work we all know only work so-so.  Certainly not as good as a tailored whatever. We accept it then because it doesn’t really matter in that instance or application. How about humanity?  Children? Human development?  Yeah, I though [...]

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what’s with work?

Just another four letter word?  WORK. When did work develop its negative connotation?  Most people I know view work as a necessary evil.  Work is to be avoided.  Work is to be gotten out of the way – quickly.  We work in order to be able to play.  No wonder there are so many dissatisfied, [...]

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Good at school?

Who cares? Right? “The essential thing measured by school is whether or not you are good at school.” Lovely.  That’s my man Seth Godin again (be sure to give him your time http://sethgodin.typepad.com/) I like Seth, don’t get me wrong.  But he does get part of his schooling shtick wrong.  He says that schools are [...]

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creating meaning – what Knowledge is

“You learn what you do, and you can’t learn what you don’t do”. That’s it.  Bye now. No, really. You create meaning by doing.  It is that simple.  We, each of us, need to be our own meaning-maker.  You don’t create meaning by just listening.  Real learning requires you to be physiologically engaged.  (Wow, he’s [...]

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learning as meaning part 2

…we don’t have  a knowledge problem… Long ago literacy was a key issue: if you couldn’t read you were blocked from being independent because you couldn’t access for yourself the writings and thoughts of others and therefore consider them for yourself.  Thought, for the illiterate, was limited.  THEN there was a knowledge problem.  People simply [...]

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learning as meaning part 1

At some point a very clever person pointed out that “it’s not getting the answer that’s important, it’s knowing what the right questions are to ask”.  This is an often overlooked point in traditional education, where the emphasis is squarely placed on the “right answer” syndrome, with the questions asked by the teacher, of course. [...]

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the end, goal, purpose, result-

It seems to me that if we can say to students who have completed their “formal” education: ” you now know that you have a gift to give, something you can do to change the world (or your part of it) for the better.  I hope you’ll do that, because we need you”, then we’ll [...]

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