“Educators in particular will need to invent new ways for their students — and themselves — to safely and successfully venture off the beaten paths, without losing their grounds and bearings.”
“Inventors need to understand the need for invention in order to begin.”
“Invent” is a powerful word, right? It means to “create or design something that has not existed before; to be the originator of.”
If we apply that high bar definition to education, what have we invented lately? Sure, there are new software programs and platforms that increase our efficiency, and some clicker-y tools that supposedly help us teach “better.” But from a practice perspective, what’s really “new?” Flipped classrooms? Blended learning? Hour of Code?
Not much.
It’s getting harder to argue that we don’t need high bar invention in education right now. But in order to invent with relevance, we have to be clear about the problem we’re trying to solve. As Edith suggests, there’s a growing urgency to “rethink the raison d’etre of schools.” As Ira suggests, the lack of teachers who themselves struggled in school has led to a narrowing of thinking about change. There are bigger questions, more complex contexts that the inventors “need to understand” in order to design the new systems and experiences our kids need.
That’s Job 1 in schools right now: Identifying, discussing, grappling with the bigger questions. Understanding the need to invent.
Image credit: Jeremy Thomas
I do agree that educators need to be innovative from the norm of how things have been run in schools and how teachers approach student learning, but do not think there is a need to invent anything.
There are successful people out there who were not successful in school. We should look at how they learned. What road did they take to their success?
There is a whole community of homeschoolers and unschoolers learning in creative, outside the box ways. Look at those kids. How are they learning?
How have people learned and education themselves for thousands of years before formal school?
We don’t need new inventions, we need a shift in mindset. We need to start from scratch, and start with how children actually learn.
I second all that the first commenter said. Hoorah for non-compulsory learning, self-direction, and on-demand learning out of necessity.
The ability to solve problems is often cited as the reason we need more creativity from our next generation of learners. But the problems that are part of the public discourse are many times just symptoms of deeper, underlying problems. It may be that the highest form of creativity is actually the ability to explore, discern, and frame problems in such a way that they may be solved.
Paralysis of our systems of legislation, business, education, health care, etc. stems from looking at the same old problems in the same old ways, and from stakeholders instinctively rejecting that which might diminish whatever power rests in or is parceled out to them. I’m convinced that real solutions do not exist within those systems, but instead in alternatives, especially when based on the consent of all involved.
I’m a teacher who used to believe that school’s net effect on society was positive. But our country is largely a product of our school system’s values and priorities…
I am now part of an alternative learning center in which learning is child-centered and embedded in the family and community. It’s slow going. Parents and teachers are gradually releasing themselves from expectations and guilt. Outsiders find us inconvenient or incomprehensible. The kids are flourishing, but we struggle toward financial sustainability. There are many more organizations like ours around the country–inventors who need incubation. So that we can in turn incubate kids, not indoctrinate them.