Education, You Are Long Over Due

Seth Godin pointed out in Unleashing the Ideavirus that...

"It took 40 years for radio to have 10 million users...15 years for TV to have 10 million users."

Something else was going on during all that time. But wait there is more.

"It took only 3 years Netscape to get 10 million, and it took Hotmail and Napster less that a year...The time it takes for and idea to circulate is approaching zero."

But something else was going on during all that time. What you ask?

Education. Education was going on. During the invention and adoption of Radio, then TV, then the Internet, and then social networking tools, education was going on.

Education, produced those who created all that innovation.

But education itself, on a fundamental level, changed almost not at all. We exchanged black boards for white boards and mixed in some computers. But on the most basic levels, kids are still told when they will learn, what they will learn, where they will learn, whom the will learn from, and how they will show what they have learned.

Education, you are due.

Comments

[Andrew B. Clark]

AMEN on this post. Just the title was enough to start a fire.

So who was educating the education system?!?! And who wants to pick up the torch - TODAY?

Keep Cooking!
Andrew

[Andrew Watt]

I agree that its time for a change in education. I work in a private school, and weve downsized from two computer rooms and a digitally-augmented library to one computer lab. Which is ridiculous.

Im having trouble, though, with getting kids to focus on what Im *supposed* to be teaching them... and Im having trouble staying focused on what Im supposed to be assuring my students are learning... when were in the library or the computer lab. So it winds up looking like Im not disciplining my classes effectively, and keeping them on-task.

Argh.

What does the new curriculum in this kind of education look like? What does it sound like? What do I do, as the teacher? What do students do, as learners? How do we get them motivated to learn, and be contributors/creators as well as users of digital culture? How do we get students to delve more deeply into human experience than just Facebook?

[Web Development Australia]

I agree to the change from black boards to white and all. But i dont agree with the point that kids are told what to do, when to do and all, because its just the beginning that they are told, later they tell us that we want this and that..

[Scott S. Floyd]

Super post! Now repost it on the Change.gov site somewhere.

[Tony Searl]

Ask the deeply entrenched assessment industry to fundamentally reform themselves? That won't happen, why would they change their comfortable status quo? They love high stakes tests.

Forcing this 'summative assessment iconic walled castle' to self implode will be the only way learning will change within a generation in systemic public institutions.

All else is regarded by those with the power, but not the will, as earnest tinkering by "out there" innovators. Great post, yes.