WOW!!!! What a great opening assignment! While I don't want to lose my wonderful job to a granny, I do like the ideas and information that Sugata is sharing. Like Montessori, Sugata has offered an exploratory box to children that others believed had no chance to demonstrate learning, or like the demonstration of Plato and Socrates asking the uneducated peasant boy various questions that demonstrated knowledge beyond any formal teaching. We are creatures that have this innate drive to explore and understand the world in which we live. I believe that we are curious by nature and giving the time beyond meeting our basic needs we will explore our world for... discovery, understanding, and creating. For example... What group of individuals took a look at a different type of rock (Hematite) and thought... if we put this in a clay pot with some charcoal... and then put the pot on a fire and cook it... the chemical reaction that takes place will be a release of CO2 and we'll be left a metal that we can call Iron (Fe), we can then mold the liquid Iron into better tools than the rocks we are using. These tools will last longer and allow us to do things we have never done.
The concerns I have about this idea is what most people have the most problem with in their everyday life...CHANGE, while I see myself as a learner that is embracing the change many around me have a greater fear of change and what it means. I have mentioned this topic before in a previous post... the Open Concept School... very few walls and designed to create learning groups and spaces, but when they opened this school in my county for my fifth grade year they forgot to get the "teachers" to change the way they taught or thought about "classrooms." What Sugata is asking the education community to do is Not just revise the delivery of content, but change the model. I can get really excited about this concept because I consider myself a follower of Vygotsky and Constructionist at heart... these kids modeled these theories like a textbook example and if these kids (with nothing) can problem solve, explore, deconstruct, construct, analyze, synthesize,and learn with very little "expert" help then how much more could students learn with someone there to ask the right questions or provide a small scaffold.
I think, while we are re-envisioning the future of education we also need to redefine the perimeters of success... to the ideology that unimportant jobs do not exist... and the primary outcome of education is to create lifelong learners that are only limited by their choices, not their standardized test label. We have to trust that given the right set of perimeters and providing some fundamental skills students can and do achieve, instead of measuring their achievement according to a single or set of content standards. If student proficiency is the goal then we need to be willing to do away with grade level learning and move students to more advanced concepts after proficiency is achieved not at the end of some term or grade level... meaning grade levels and report card grades will become irrelevant.
I really like the following Ted talks as a way to build upon Sugata's ideology. (Check them out)
4 comments:
Now that you got me thinking his ideas do sound like a virtual Montessori school. I know a lot of parents look at those schools and think the students just get to play all day and don't learn anything, but people who went to those schools are generally the most intelligent people I have met. They are able to develop the skills they are good at and explore all their interests in depth. Change is always the biggest struggle when it comes to anything. Change usually brings a lot of fear and when people don't feel safe and secure they tend to overreact.
Rafe,
You are right that Mitra’s ideas are radical, or would be perceived as such, in most educational settings, and that we would need to do more than just “revise the delivery of content, but change the model.” I also believe that students should not be grouped by age and grade levels, but be promoted based on proficiency in basic skills. But, yes, what defines success and proficiency and how to measure it? As much as these ideas make sense, they would demand a complete overhaul of the modern educational system…a tearing down and rebuilding of what we do today, and a complete change of mindset that the greater population is entrenched in, because it’s all they know. Scary, but exciting!
YES!!! I have actually been reading a lot of different articles etc. lately which indicate that the entire system of "grading" as we know it has to change if it is to reflect true ability, and that we as teachers need to provide feedback and opportunity to demonstrate success instead of just giving poor marks and moving on. You do a fantastic job delineating the innate curiosity of the individual.
I also kind of thought that law makers/the public might act as if a student only needs a granny (the way some teachers feel like the public sometimes considers them babysitters).
I like your thought that you mention no job is unimportant. If my window is broken and it is cold out side, the window repairperson is important. If I need to take my small child to the bathroom at a restaurant, whoever cleans that bathroom is important to me. The list goes on.
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