“hschmidt07” reflects on Dewey and wonders:
[...] how children should be educated in an unpredictable world, in an unending arena of expansion known as the age of information. The advent of this new face of society has evolving needs calling for many types of leadership. This is where I strongly agree with Dewey’s poignant statement that it is ‘impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions’. Unfortunately to say, I believe that the test-teaching and core curriculums used for teachers to keep their jobs and for schools to remain open, is in fact focusing almost primarily on just a few subjects compared to the wide world of democracy.
[...] Major structural change in education would do our information-and-subjects-rich world a great service to our society. The focus of this new model of education would follow in line with John Dewey’s insistence that the individual’s personality might be nurtured and trained, in hopes that curiosity and creativity will not be demolished by the current structure of the core curriculum used in all U.S. public education, from kindergarten-12th grades.
The Information Age, however, is already over. We are now in the Knowledge Age, maximizing what we know from information and new knowledge production; and, we are swiftly moving toward an age focused on the innovative and new contextual use of knowledge. Of course, 19th Century production line models of education need to be replaced. Human beings in knowledge and innovation societies cannot be educated as automatons with “download” forms of knowledge. They need to embraced and cultivated as creatives.
To this, I can only say: Long live Leapfrog!
Comments
Amen!
Good post.