After posting two comments to this post by David Warlick, I then read this at Remote Access:
Business Week Online has a round up of the best ideas of 2005. Some of them include the fading importance of geography, the knowledge economy morphing into the creative economy, social networking for the @ generation, podcasting, and going green.
Once again I ask, as teachers, how are we preparing our students for this future?
Is the writing on the wall yet? With so many teachers making the same point (a point that has been made continually for the past 30 years or so, perhaps even continuously!), the question that begs to be asked is, if kids are doing all this underground learning (i.e. learning IN SPITE of school), then when are schools going to get the hell out of the way?
Thanks, Doug. That is a most appropriate quote. My students are being schooled, but I wonder how aware they are of what it is doing to them.
You might be interested in the encyclopedia of informal education. I found this short article about Ivan Illich, which features a quote from his book, Deschooling Society:
Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby “schooled” to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is “schooled” to accept service in place of value.
oh! write very good…