RSA Animate – Changing Education Paradigms

http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/10/14/rsa-animate-changing-education-paradigms/

by jeeringmole • 16 years ago

30 13 16 years ago

comment.rsablogs.org.uk

Groxx2• 16 years ago

Really good animations, really good points, but I don't recall seeing any concrete suggestions in any of these.

Are they just high-profile, high-quality rants, hoping to get others to come up with changes? Or is there something more concrete backing these that isn't disseminated with them, preventing their (really good?) ideas from being implemented?

I've only seen a few, but are others more useful? They're all interesting, but those aren't the same thing.

araneae2• 16 years ago

Right. I really like his point about the schooling being a factory, with people going through based on date of manufacture. I absolutely think it would be awesome if you could go through your grades at your own pace, in different subjects. A software based approach to learning would be excellent for this.

But of course this is completely antithetical to his latter point, which is that group based learning/problem-solving is important. You can't have groups if everyone is going at their own pace.

The happy medium might be to structure elementary education more like college, with the ability to take 100 level classes in the 4th year or whatnot. But of course, this is far more expensive than the batch method because you have to have many more classes. To support so many classes you have to have many more children, which means vastly larger schools, so you might only be able to do it in densely populated cities.

dpatru2• 16 years ago

> You can't have groups if everyone is going at their own pace.

Isn't this how adults learn? (And children too, when out of the classroom.) If you want to learn something new, say how to program in Haskell, what do you do? You probably don't try to find an institution to which you pay a lot of money and which offers you in return a seat in a room along with thirty others like you in which an instructor talks to you for a few hours a week.

Instead, if you want to learn Haskell programming, you check for learning materials online and go through them at your own pace. When you get stuck, you find online forums where you can ask questions. Also, as you learn, you answer other people's questions on the forums. You are learning at your own pace but you are not isolated.

pat2man• 16 years ago

"In June 2003, Robinson was knighted in for his achievements in creativity, education and the arts." ~Wikipedia

He has plenty of ideas. This speech is trying to get people to see that the current ideas aren't working and work together to create a new system of education.

dpatru2• 16 years ago

I see this talk as an argument against "traditional" schooling. The alternative to traditional schooling is anything not traditional. In the US, that would be homeschooling or private school like Montessori. The political takeaway is that government schooling (which necessarily places emphasis on uniformity and conformity) is harmful and that private alternatives should be encouraged.

alecco• 16 years ago

I actually like it doesn't end in a stupid one liner like most similar talks. It's not a hollywood movie, it doesn't need closure.

Further research and tests of changing policies are needed.

JeffL2• 16 years ago

Concrete suggestions:

Don't treat schooling like a factory.

Don't group students by age.

Don't teach around the concept of there just being one answer.

Don't segregate people into two tracks: academic and working.

A lot of the things he's talking about are the same as what Maria Montessori advocated. If I have kids I plan on sending them to a Montessori school if I can afford it.

Groxx2• 16 years ago

Those are more like concrete anti suggestions. They're things to not do, not things to do. They say what to get away from, which nearly anyone can agree on, but not on what to go towards, which few agree on, which is a big reason why they're not changing.

nlco• 16 years ago

I really like the animations (except for the arm, I wish the words just "appeared" sort of like the music video for "heartless" by the fray). Does anyone know of a tool that can help us make this easier?

bugsy2• 16 years ago

For more detail on the background of factory education and the reason for it, and a bit more details on alternatives, check out John Taylor Gatto's works. He's a former NY state educator of the year who came to realize that school as we know it is bad for people.

Transcript of one interview:

http://www.ttfuture.org/files/2/pdf/gotto_interview.pdf

mp3 of another interview:

http://jari.podbean.com/mf/web/ja8dm2/LivingHero19--JohnGatt...

He also has a couple books in particular "Dumbing Us Down" and "Weapons of Mass Instruction".

RSA Animate – Changing Education Paradigms

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