Making Learning Relevant

When I ask educators what they need to do to make education better almost envariably they say – make learning relevant. OR connect learning to life. Educators have been saying that for more than 20 years. But what have they done? Here’s an example of making learning relevant and real:

MAKE IT REAL
Doing leads to learning. Instead of confronting students (or employees) with abstract concepts, take the lesson out into the real world. Make it real: That’s what Bob Moses did when he created the Algebra Project. He took his middle-school students around Boston in search of experiences that demonstrated the practical uses of math. A ride on the subway became a lesson in coordinate graphing and negative numbers. When Moses taught students about displacement, he had them measure the dimensions of their own bodies. Students always had to “participate in a physical event.” Follow-up studies have confirmed the benefits of Moses’ experiential curriculum. Ninety-two percent of his Algebra Project graduates in Cambridge went on to upper-level math courses, twice the rate of students not in the program. The same philosophy works outside the classroom, too. Look at Toyota. In many ways, its Georgetown, KY, manufacturing plant is a school that happens to produce cars. Because Toyota doesn’t distinguish between learning and doing, it’s willing to stop the assembly line any time a problem crops up on the floor. With its philosophy of constant self-improvement, turning out slightly fewer engines each day is a small price to pay for teaching its workers how to turn out better ones. (Seed 19 Jul 2006)

Now that’s what I’m talking about!

Students are People Two