Podcast142: John & Roger’s Perspective
Here I am on my holidays. A chance, finally to catch up with Wes Fryer’s podcast142 on the speed of creativity website. The one I listened to last night rang true with me as Roger C. Schank spoke about his view of education. All the notes, wikis, blogs, presentation material etc are all available here from on the Speed of Creativity website so I won’t bother re-linking them all to here as they are 2 clicks away.
I wanted instead, to dwell on the concept he was dealing with in terms of creating valuable learning scenarios and not wasting time with the ‘just in case’ teaching that is so prevalent in our education system today.
David Warlick, when he was here for the Learning@schools conference talked about the fact that in New Zealand so much freedom is given over to New Zealand schools and not dictated from the ‘district’ or governmental level that the move towards School2.0, Classroom2.0 and Library2.0 stands a good chance of implementation in NZ schools. I think he was referring to where the purse strings are held. Which is true. However, if I were to share this podcast with staff and colleagues I am sure that there would be much puffing of cheeks and shaking of heads. A fear of unknown sits within our schools…. Even if the principal is progressive and forward thinking there are still those at the senior or middle management level had would vocal in their advocating for status quo.
Roger gave the quote from John Adams “There are two types of education, one will teach how to make a living the other will teach us how to live. “
I happen to agree. What I am most pleased about is that Roger does not leave us high a dry, with the idea that what we are doing is archaic but offers thoughts and suggestions as to how the curriculum for the 21st Century should look. He stated:
“Writing
Speaking
Reasoning
Getting along with others
Making and executing a plan
Understanding what tools are available to you
Making use of known principles.”
These are the core competencies. Regardless of whether you are teaching social studies, Science, or electrical engineering, those competencies above are the skills you will need.
So back to the
New Zealand way…. Like John Adams said we need to teach children how to earn a living and how to live, but then it’s very easy to ignore
Adams’ logical approach to education: Him being:
- So far away
- American
- Dead.
But do any of those three reasons make him wrong?
[...] very inspiring as a learner and challenging as an educator. Seeing the main speaker reminded me of Roger Schank and the podcast Wes shared years ago . It is still about the shifting face of Education and I feel we will be continuing on this same [...]