Mom Behind the Curtain

every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard

Most Likely to Succeed – Learn more Part 11/11

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Most Likely to Succeed - change the antiquated structure of education to prepare students for jobs and create happier, healthier, more creative individuals.Like I said at the beginning of this post series, Most Likely to Succeed points out many concerns with the current educational system that I agree with, and proposes some of the best solutions I’ve seen to correct these problems.

Children hate school and doing well in school doesn’t necessarily lead to success; school doesn’t have to be this way and is not teaching our children skills for the jobs that will be available to them, ones that can’t be replaced by machines. Our current educational system was designed over a hundred years ago for a vastly different world and is going to have to change to keep up with the world….

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The problems with group projects – Most Likely to Succeed Part 9/11

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Most Likely to Succeed - For group projects like those portrayed at High Tech High in Most Likely to Succeed, schools will have to structure, teach and grade projects differently.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….

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High Tech High – Most Likely to Succeed Part 6/11

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Most Likely to Succeed go in search of a new model for teaching, an alternative to memorizing facts and to regurgitate them on tests - High Tech High.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….

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Fear of Failure in Education – Most Likely to Succeed Part 5/11

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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.

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. …

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We don’t need human calculators, so why are we training them? – Most Likely to Succeed, Part 4/11

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Most Likely to Succeed - Our education system was designed to train workers for jobs that are being replaced by machines. It's outdated.

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,…

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How important is doing well in school to success? – Most Likely to Succeed Part 3/11

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Does your kid hate school? Have you told them that it's for important so they can get a good job? How important is doing well in school to success?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.”…

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I hate school – Most Likely to Succeed, Part 2/11

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"I hate school." Does your kid hate school? Do kids they really hate it because they have to work hard and they are lazy, or is there another reason?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….

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Most Likely to Succeed Documentary Review and Discussion – Part 1/11

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Most Likely to SucceedWhen 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….

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