Engines for Education

Engines for Education is a nonprofit organization founded by Roger Schank, whose goal is to radically change our notions of school. John Adams said that education should teach people how to live or how to make a living. Our schools do neither. They teach how to pass tests about meaningless knowledge that never comes up in real life. The goal of Engines for Education is to provide an alternative. Our first full-year curriculum in Health Sciences is now available, and a four-year alternative to high school will begin in September, 2010.

You can learn more about Dr. Schank on his homepage and by reading his Education Outrage Blog.

What's New?

Alternative Learning Places - Engines for Education and Socratic Arts are opening learning centers where a small group of children learn by doing planned activities that they are interested in. The Alternative Learning Placess will give parents and their children an alternative to our broken education system. Visit the Alternative Learning Places website for more information.

Roger Schank has a new book coming out: Cognition! Teaching kids to think. Preview the updated first four chapters of the book or email your friends about the book. (Preview last updated 13 November 2009.)

Engines for Education is proud to announce the formation of the world’s first alternative online, learn by doing, high school. This is a four-year high school where only one curriculum is followed each year. Students will be admitted into this curriculum in September, 2010. They will matriculate at schools that have agreed to offer this curriculum.

Learn more about the Alternative High School.

VISTA's Year in Health Sciences is now open for enrollment! Engines for Education announces that, due to the generous support of The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, we have completed our first full-year Story-Centered Curriculum in Health Sciences. Read more about what the curriculum involves and how you can enroll.

The first students have begun VISTA's Health Science Story-Centered Curriculum and the results are impressive! See what people are saying about the curriculum and the work students are completing.

The Software Development program is open for enrollment! In this series of story-centered curricula students are immersed in the world of developing modern web pages, from simple web pages to interactive websites with databases. During the process students will develop skills in the programming languanges needed to accomplish theses tasks as they learn by doing.

Read more about what the Software Development program entails.

Introducing Grandparent Games, Roger Schank's new idea for teaching reading and math online to little kids. Inspired by his desire to interact with his new grandson who lived in a different state, Roger's innovative design is now available for other grandparents.

Read more about Grandparent Games and how you can build a relationship with your grandchild while contributing to their early education.

Read Roger's blog on Grandparent Games to see how it is working out with his own grandchildren.

Take Grandparent Games with you with Roger's iPhone of iPod Touch apps. Five Little Monkeys, Alphabet Animations, and more. See all of Grandparent Games' iPhone Apps.

For more on how schools fail to teach people how to live, and to learn more about the Story-Centered Curriculum and our learn-by-doing approach to education, read Roger Schank’s Every Curriculum Tells a Story.

Get Involved

With your help, we can change how people view education and give our children an alternative to the antiquated, ineffective teaching methods that plague our schools.

Learn how you can get involved and start to make a difference.

Participate in VISTA's Year in Health Sciences curriculum.
Adopt the Story-Centered Curriculum for the schools in your area.
Implement the Story-Centered Curriculum for your company's training needs.
Support our efforts through a tax-deductible donation.

Hear What Roger Has to Say

Read Roger's column Educational Outrage to learn more about why education needs to be reformed.

Read Roger Schank's two-page white paper All you ever need to know about learning.

See the reaction to Roger's June visit to Brigham Young University.

See Roger Schank discussing the Business of Innovation on CNBC.

Watch Roger discuss education reform on Entrevista.
Mira Roger hablar de la reforma de la educación en Entrevista.