I stumbled across three different piece about education recently that all kind of tie together. In the first, an award-winning schoolteacher pulls back the curtain on the education kids are really receiving. Given the site this appeared on (UnSchooling.com), I initially read this rather cynically, but also recognized these lessons still functioning deep inside myself.
The conclusions are not pretty. Instead of a rich intellectual and social life that inspires and challenges children, Gatto suggests that what children learn is
- Confusion - by only showing bits and pieces out of context;
- Class Position - through grades and other mechanisms;
- Indifference - bells and time limits to kill any sense of flow or joy;
- Emotional Dependency - via stars and checks, smiles and frowns, honours and disgraces;
- Intellectual Dependency - learn what we tell you to, ignore the rest;
- Provisional Self-Esteem - through grades that tell kids exactly how much they (and others should) like themselves;
- One Can't Hide - no privacy - ever. — The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher
The second was a techno-enthusiastic argument that virtually all subjects should be re-considered from an AI-first perspective. While the issue of a lack of data scientists is real, and educating more data scientists is a slow process, starting to teach AI principles in kindergarten may not be the best approach. Focusing all education on a single topic, albeit an important emerging one, seems shortsighted. The argument is that really that one person's pet-topic should be the focus of a student's entire world.
Such a single-minded approach adds great depth to the topic of AI. Yet, that depth comes at the expense of depth in virtually everything else. Math, for example, is not only about statistics (the basis of AI computation).
Seth Godin, on the other hand, takes an opposite approach. He suggests 11 topics that can be explored across all levels of education. His focus is on growing a whole human being, one with whom we agree it would be great to work with or for.
"More important, because it’s self-directed and project-based, kids can choose to learn, instead of being forced to." — The modern curriculum
This idea of self-directed learning goes exactly against the conclusions of the first piece. It points a way forward for kids to grow into adults with their sense of wonder, curiosity, and joy still intact. It also provides a way to strengthen a grow the ability to self-manage, to think in projects, and do research.