Posts from — May 2007

Here is a link to a nice video on some of the changes taking place in education around the US.

http://www.edutopia.org/node/3285

It’s an interesting name for something so simple – letting a young person’s interests drive their learning. But that’s what the movement is being called. Unschooling, to some degree, is simply an extension of homeschooling. The difference is that the young person is ‘driving’ the learning by what they find interesting or want to know more about.

The name, first used in 1970 by someone called John Holt, but in a recent article in Teacher Magazine it says the movement is growing. There are no hard numbers on how many young people are being unschooled but there are an estimated 1.1million young people being home schooled.

The worry expressed by educators is that young people will lose their way. I wonder. It’s probably true that some people using this approach may lack some content knowledge but isn’t curiosity and a desire to learn (and the ability to learn) more important?

Here’s a link to Unschooling – a web site with resources for and about unschooling.

Here’s Google’s results when searching for unschooling.

Howard Gardner, the person that wrote about multiple intelligences, has a short article in a business journal about what he is calling, Five Minds for the Future.

He says we all need to develop these five minds in order to be successful in the future. They are: the disciplined mind, the synthesizing mind, the creating mind, the respectful mind and the ethical mind.

Here’s the quote from his article:

The disciplined mind has mastered at least one way of thinking — a distinctive mode of cognition that characterizes a specific scholarly discipline, craft, or profession. Much research conforms that it takes up to ten years to master a discipline. The disciplined mind also knows how to work steadily over time to improve skill and understanding — in the vernacular, it is highly disciplined. Without at least one discipline under his belt, the individual is destined to march to someone else’s tune.

The synthesizing mind takes information from disparate sources, understands and evaluates that information objectively, and puts it together in ways that make sense to the synthesizer and also to other persons. Valuable in the past, the capacity to synthesize becomes ever more crucial as information continues to mount at dizzying rates.

Building on discipline and synthesis, the creating mind breaks new ground. It puts forth new ideas, poses unfamiliar questions, conjures up fresh ways of thinking, arrives at unexpected answers. Ultimately, these creations must find acceptance among knowledgeable consumers. By virtue of its anchoring in territory that is not yet rule-governed, the creating mind seeks to remain at least one step ahead of even the most sophisticated computers and robots.

Recognizing that nowadays one can no longer remain within one’s shell or on one’s home territory, the respectful mind notes and welcomes differences between human individuals and between human groups, tries to understand these “others,” and seeks to work effectively with them. In a world where we are all interlinked, intolerance or disrespect is no longer a viable option.

Proceeding on a level more abstract than the respectful mind, the ethical mind ponders the nature of one’s work and the needs and deserves of the society in which one lives. This mind conceptualizes how workers can serve purposes beyond self-interest and how citizens can work unselfishly to improve the lot of all. The ethical mind then acts on the basis of these analyses.

Here’s another external motivator for high school students – finish early (complete all your courses) by mid-term and you receive a $1500 scholarship. Now I can imagine a lot of young people will buy into this idea. Lawmakers say they will allow students to continue to participate in sports even if they graduate early.

Arizona lawmakers offer $1,500 to seniors who finish early
Arizona lawmakers this week signed off on giving $1,500 scholarships to students who complete necessary high school course work by the middle of their senior year. Lawmakers hope the measure will encourage high school students to buckle down; schools will continue to receive student funding for the whole year less the $1,500 advanced to the student. Arizona Daily Star (Tucson)/Capitol Media Services (5/3)

I think this is interesting for a lot of reasons. We know that school is based on the principle of ’seat time’ – the amount of time a young person is in their seat – and on the principle of ticking off subjects from a list. Does learning matter? I still don’t see anything that tells me that these young people learn anything that will help them to be successful in their life after they leave school. So this incentive motivates young people to get ‘out of school’ and into the rest of their lives – without any clear knowledge they have what they need in order to be successful in that life.