Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Fix Poverty? Forget About Education

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Here are three quotes that will hopefully lead you to read this really interesting interview with John Marsh, the author of Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of Inequality.

–What I learned — and what I wanted to convey in the book — is the unsettling truth that if people truly care about lessening poverty and economic inequality, they should forget about education.

–People who live in more equal countries live demonstrably better lives than those who live in less equal countries. In more equal countries, people — rich and poor alike — live longer, trust each other more, discriminate against women less, devote more resources to foreign aid, have fewer bouts of mental illness, use fewer drugs, murder each other less, have lower rates of infant mortality, suffer less from obesity, are more literate and numerate, complete more years of schooling, imprison fewer people, and enjoy greater social mobility.

–Although economists and scholars debate it, it is not clear that the United States needs or will need many more college graduates than it already generates.

And for once, there’s a fairly high level, balanced, respectful comment thread that parses the ideas even further. I love when the comments make me think as much as the article.

What do you think?

“The Shut Door is About to be Wrenched Open”

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Bryan Alexander has been thinking and writing about these trends for a long time now, and I think this analysis of why classrooms are going to change whether we like it or not is pretty much spot on. As always, the whole essay is worth the read, but I was particularly struck by this thought:

“Class begins when the classroom door closes.” This image is enshrined in many practices, much popular memory, and even campus policies. But the concept may well be turned inside out in the near future as several trends coincide, altering the ways we teach and learn. That shut door is about to be wrenched open and our closed classes drawn into a global, visible college (compared to the invisible college described by David Staley and Dennis Trinkle1).

The question is how much of that “visible” education will trickle down to K-12. As more and more mobile devices and more and more connectivity become the norm, that’s a question that we’re going to have to answer. 

Quote O' the Day

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From Lev Gonick, CIO of Case Western Reserve, in The Chronicle of Higher Ed, writing about “How Technology Will Reshape Academe After the Economic Crisis“:

Indeed, the whole learning process is changing thanks to the Internet. First professors posted syllabi online and used e-mail to supplement their office hours. Then learning activities like classroom presentations were supplemented by student-published Web pages, searchable discussion forums, and collaborative wikis. In a curve that has only been accelerating these past 20 years, we now have an educational economy of information abundance confronting an educational delivery system that was built for a time of information scarcity. Colleges have shared some of their best teaching using new systems like Apple’s iTunes U, OpenCourseWare, and explosive content-creation activities underway in countries like India and China.

Future generations of learners will no doubt look back at the global economic crisis of 2008-9 and reflect on which institutions were agile enough to make a difference by bringing the wisdom of their scholars together with the acumen of their technology officers and the ingenuity and determination of their university leaders. It’s actually not only the future of the university that is in play. How we produce, organize, and distribute open education resources is at the heart of the future of education around the world. [Emphasis mine.]

While this is obviously a look at higher ed, it has implications for the K-12 set, no doubt. He also talks about the looming demise of the textbook industry. Good stuff.