Will Richardson

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Palliative Care

October 26, 2012 By Will Richardson

Richard Elmore from Harvard, quoted here:

“I do not believe in the institutional structure of public schooling anymore,” Elmore said, noting that his long-standing work at helping teachers and principals professionalize their practice is “palliative care for a dying institution.” Elmore predicted “a progressive dissociation between learning and schooling…” His comments reflected his concerns that technology, and the networked learning that is emerging in the 21st century, is a key reason for the collapse of institutional schooling, and that nueroscience is revealing how inadequate our schools are for addressing the way children actually learn. “The modal classroom in the modal school [in the United States] is exactly the opposite of what we’re learning about how human beings develop cognitively,” he said.

(Full, unfastforwardable video here. See 1 hour, 20 minutes in.)

Good news. Bad news. For the record, I like Elmore, and I can totally see where he’s coming from, but I don’t think he’s arguing that school is going away. But the institutional structure of school cannot and will not weather the affordances of the Web. 

So, like it appears Elmore’s next book will be about, what now?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: education, learning, schools

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