every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard
The other thing that is going to have to be changed with project based learning – or more student exploration type learning – is the size of school curriculum.
It’s going to have to be cut.
Drastically.
I am constantly told by administrators and teachers that the current curriculum is too broad and too specific to adequately teach in a school year….
In my last post I mentioned that ranking our kids against each other isn’t useful because companies don’t need the best engineer, they need ten “of the best” engineers who can work together. They need kids who can work in groups. That’s the whole reason given for all the group projects my kids have been assigned at school. But in the past, school group projects have had all sorts of problems, especially for top achieving kids.
To look at this, I’ll again refer back to the documentary Most Likely to Succeed and how they do group projects at High Tech High. And for this method of learning to work another thing (besides how we think about grades) that would have to change at our school is how we do group projects….
In my last post, I mentioned that changing how learning happens in school is going to mean changing how we see grades. Let me explain what I mean. What are grades for? Just exactly why are grades important in school?
I am going to guess that initially, as class sizes got larger and standardization was occurring, grades were meant to be a measure for both students and teachers. Some way was needed to assess whether or not the material had been learned.
In this system, a “high” grade would indicate that enough of the information has been understood to move on to a different or more complex topic. (Remember when a 70 was considered “passing” and an indication that you could move on?)…
The response at our school district’s showing of Most Likely to Succeed was overwhelmingly positive. The film did a good job of pointing out all the weaknesses of our current system, but left you with an uplifting feeling. This was a welcome change from all of the other research I’ve done that has confirmed my fears that something is drastically wrong with our current educational system, but with little to offer in the way of change other than patching over some real problems.
I think the positive response was also in part to a growing concern I have seen in our district about the amount of homework and anxiety in our kids. Parents did bring up some valid concerns, some of which were answered by other parents present who work for testing agencies, state education agencies, and universities. The concerns were mainly centered on project based learning.
As I said, the documentary gave the impression that project based learning was the only option. Even though it was acknowledged early on in the discussion in our district that it was just one option, the discussion stayed pretty much on project based learning. The long and the short of it is…
After pointing out the many flaws of our current educational system, the makers of Most Likely to Succeed go in search of a new model for teaching, an alternative to memorizing facts and to regurgitate them on tests. To go even further, a school alternative that more closely matches up to tasks that students will have to be able to complete in their future jobs.
A large portion of the film is then spent profiling a select group of students at a High Tech High, which teaches primarily by having the students do independent projects in groups, or project based learning….
Most Likely to Succeed – Fear of failure – Schools are as much afraid of failing the test as students are, in spite of it not being a guarantee of success.
In my last post, I talked about how the documentary Most Likely to Succeed showed that the history of education led us to the practice of students memorizing enormous amounts of material.
Most Likely to Succeed uses AP history as an example of a course that requires memorizing an overwhelming number of facts. The way they described it matches up exactly with what my kids have experienced first hand. They are learning loads of facts, and they aren’t retaining it. I think both the book and the documentary cite an example of a school who gave a repeat AP history test to their students a few months after they finished the course. …
Most Likely to Succeed – Our education system was designed to train workers for jobs that are being replaced by machines. It’s outdated.
I managed to write two posts on just the first few minutes of the documentary Most Likely to Succeed: about how the concerns of the filmmakers about school resonated with me, disputing the reasoning that kids quit liking school because it gets harder and questioning whether or not doing well in school really will lead to success.
After that brief introduction, Most Likely to Succeed spends quite a bit of time illustrating how computers will make knowledge-based jobs obsolete,…
In my last post, I talked being able to relate to the experience of the makers of the documentary Most Likely to Succeed, because my kids don’t like school.
Their dislike of school started at a young age, but at this point I will admit that I might not be helping any. Because I also identified with the narrator when he realized that what he was telling his child about school – that you need to do well in school to get a good job – wasn’t true. In the past I’ve used statements, almost exactly like the ones he used, when talking to my own kids. Things like —
“You want to flip burgers the rest of your life? If not, you’ve got to do well in school.”…
I hate school.
I don’t want to go to school.
Have your kids ever said those things?
One way I judge the validity of ideas in books or documentaries is if they match up with what I’m hearing or experiencing personally. It’s not just me, lots of people are experiencing the same thing. It’s a bigger problem than I thought.
There are several ideas in Most Likely to Succeed, a documentary based on the book, Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith, that really resonated with me.
To begin with, my kids started disliking school around the same age as the daughter in the film, somewhere around 3rd-5th grade. Before that, they varied between liking and even loving school….
When I realize that I’ve come across a recommendation for a book in more than one place, it seems a sure sign I should read it. In this case, Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith, the book, was on my reading list for quite a while from various sources. I had even checked it out from the library twice but not managed to read it. Then I heard that our superintendent would be showing the documentary with the same name to both the teachers and parents in our school district. So I bought the book and started reading it….