Educational Philosophy

Traveling Pirate posted a comment the other day about education in Finland. Seems they still value vocational education highly. Actually, they seem to value education in general quite highly. I also received an e-mail from the Chicago Tinkering School the next day. And as these things often go, it had a link to Brightworks, a new school opening in San Francisco. As this was the first I had heard of Brightworks, I clicked on the link and checked it out. On the bottom of their home page are two statements that certainly fit in with my educational philosophy: everything is interesting, we can build anything.

Those two statements seem to be a great foundation on which to build a school. Everything is interesting - somethings are just more interesting than others. And of course our interests are colored by our experiences and how we're introduced to a subject. I've noticed over the years that many high school kids are very close-minded. If it's not exactly what they're interested in on that day, it really doesn't matter what you do, they don't want to hear about it. They limit their learning experiences and end up graduating high school knowing very little about anything.

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you'll know why I identify with the "we can build anything" statement. Because we can. And have. The State of Indiana is currently busy writing laws that are designed to improve public education. The reality is that they are dismantling public education. Instead of focusing legislative reform on removing the impediments to learning, they have decided that it's the union's fault that kids aren't learning. Rather than me rehashing the stupidity of what's going on, let's take a moment and present another scenario.

The little tykes go off to school and they are just tickled to death. They do the original cut and paste, they draw, they sing songs, they do the ABC's, and they learn because everything is interesting. As they age and work through the grades, they continue to be exposed to anything that is interesting. That should be easy, everything is interesting. They also continue to build things. They go from gluing cotton ball clouds on construction paper to woodworking, metalworking, photography, bookbinding, leatherworking, gardening, fishing, hiking, you name it -just keep throwing it at them so they are exposed to a variety of stimuli and they are using their developing skills to build things. Any thing. When they graduate from high school they will have been exposed to all kinds of things by pursuing what interested them and what interested their teachers. They will have developed the skills to build all types of things because they built all types of things. They will have used their math concepts, learned some electronics, woodworking, welding, machining, etc., and since they didn't learn these skills and concepts in isolation, they can apply them wherever they fit or as need arises.

The damned concept is so simple, anyone should be able to grasp it. When you're out fishing, you don't have to talk about fish. When you're out hiking, you can talk about geology but you don't have to. Everything is interesting. So let's discuss it. And let's build something to go along with it. Let's build lots and lots of things. Everything is interesting. If you can build anything, you have to know about everything. Really simple. Done properly, it could go a long way to mitigate the effects of poverty, race and other impediments to educational success.

I'm really glad to see there is some movement in the right direction. I'm not sure if Brightworks will be the answer but it's definitely going in the right direction. Finland has been kicking our ass for awhile now and instead of squaring off against them and seeing what we can do to get on top, we look at the thing least likely to make it better and go with that.

So the answers to improving education are out there, it just requires some decent leadership to implement. The state legislature is absolutely clueless as to what they're doing., so they're no help. Instead, just keep the level of interest up and the kids will damn near teach themselves. Blow up all the computers in the buildings unless they are being used as a tool such as part of a CNC milling program. Get the kids outside as much as possible. And put some creative people in charge. People that are interested in everything and can build anything. I know they're out there. Hell, that describes most of my friends and family.