Education Threads

I received an e-mail from my buddy Kevin after the last post - he'll be going to Europe with the group - and said when I finish the book about Shakespeare & Co. bookstore, I should read the Element by Ken Robinson. I'm somewhat familiar with Mr. Robinson but I went to TED and listened to one of his speeches again. He's an excellent speaker. Kind of a cross between a stand up comedian and the person you would want to be the superintendent at the school corporation you worked at and your children attended. The link here will take you to one of the TED presentations. It's about 20 minutes long. If you can't devote that much time, tune in at about the 8:30-9:00 minute mark. That's when he really gets down to business discussing how schools kill creativity in their effort to turn everyone into a college professor. On second thought, make yourself a cup of Joe, get comfortable and watch the whole presentation. It's well worth it. And then make time to watch another one.

The October 1st Wall Street Journal had an op-ed piece with the title: "Who Says Home-Ec Isn't a Core Subject." Apparently Japanese Schools teach home-economics starting in the fifth grade and continuing through high school. The students learn sewing skills, meal planning, cooking, grocery shopping, and woodworking. The punchline of the piece is: "Like Japan, we needn't fear that time allocated to home economics will get in the way of a sound education. We need to embrace the idea that it is essential to one." Really, this op-ed piece needs to be read in it's entirety as well. To find out more about the author's work, check here.

The WSJ also had special section on education on Wednesday of this week. The feature opened with a story about Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs as they are called  (Time magazine also did a piece on these recently as well). If your not familiar with this movement, you will be. Now you too will be able to have a Harvard education but you won't have to leave home or spend $50 grand a year. One fact I found especially interesting in the opening graphic was that midnight to 2 a.m. are the peak hours for viewing edx lecture videos. Maybe night school should actually be night school. Also, there are innovation courses available to business executives and others where "Lectures are out. Learning by doing is in."  This kind of stuff always makes me chuckle. Learning by doing - have we all forgotten John Dewey? Also available at WSJ.com/Leadership Report is a video about "a high school that has done away with paper textbooks and requires all students to study using tablets and laptops."

Most importantly, for everyone who wishes to learn by doing and with no laptop required, no less, I received a postcard in the mail announcing that someone has bought Lindsay's books and publishing rights. The new business is called Your Old Time Bookstore and you can find them right here. So yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. MOOCs, digital textbooks, apps, it's all good and they're here to stay. But there's still a place for a cheap book full of old time technology.

Summing this all up or looking for the common thread, the WSJ has an op-ed piece stating that home economics should be part of the common core in schools, Sir Kenneth Robinson says that schools currently are killing creativity by marginalizing the arts, and in the special feature section the WSJ says we should be learning by doing, and if you must attend lectures, you can do that at midnight from your from your own home or damn near any place in the world as long as you have internet access. And as if all of this isn't enough to think about, it's once again possible to buy a reprint of an old book about steam engines, woodworking, metal working, and a host of other subjects.

I think it's obvious that the educational model is changing, and for the better. The test, test, test format isn't working and there is no reason to expect it to. The students are much more digital savvy and the delivery system is going to have to be as well. Learning by doing, hands-on, experiential, Flipped Learning - whatever you want to call it - has always been successful. No reason it can't still be, schools just need to start doing a little more of it. Charter schools are going to force the public schools to change or maybe I should say allow the public schools to change. Either that or the politicians will load the charter schools up with the same burdensome rules as public schools and they too will lose the ability to create innovative solutions. (The politicians can't be that stupid, can they? Okay, we all know the answer to that one.) With college education having become prohibitively expensive and no longer a path to guaranteed employment, the MOOCs are going to play an even more important role in education, whether that's part of a traditional degree program or leading to some type of a non- accredited degree, that is, you take the courses but since you don't properly register and pay for the credits, you just get smarter rather than getting poorer. As Sam Cooke sang back in the 60's, "Change is gonna come, oh yes it will." And it's about time.

Have a good weekend.