EdTechTrek

Who made the following statement? How long ago?

Pedagogical leaders are calling upon the schools to free themselves from tradition and subject matter. Whatever students learn should be relevant to their future lives and work. It is it foolish to saturate them with a mass of knowledge that can have little application for the lives which most of them must inevitably lead. They are sure to become disappointed and discontented, and who knows where all this discontent might lead. Abandon your antiquated academic ideals and instead adapt education to the real life and real needs of your students.

So, who’s making such claims?

Ellwood P. Cubberley, dean of the education school at Stanford…

….. 1911!

(Adapted from Diane Ravitch’s post, 21st Century Skills: An Old Familiar Song

To quote Ravitch some more:

“The problem with skills-driven approaches to learning is that there are so many things we need to know that cannot be learned by hand-on experiences. The educated person learns not only from his or her own experience, but from the hard-earned experience of others. We do not restart the world anew in each generation. We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. What matters most in the use of our brains is our capacity to make generalizations, to see beyond our own immediate experience. The intelligent person, the one who truly is a practitioner of critical thinking, has the learned capacity to understand the lessons of history, to engage in the adventures of literature, to grasp the inner logic of science and mathematics, and to realize the meaning of philosophical debates by studying them. Through literature, for example, we have the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of another person, to walk in their shoes, to experience life as it was lived in another century and another culture, to live vicariously beyond the bounds of our own time and family and place. What a gift! How sad to refuse it!

Until we teach our teachers and our students to love knowledge and to love learning, we cannot expect them to use their minds well.“

I could quote it all, but instead, go read Diane Ravitch’s entire statement. It is time well spent.