Why learning by doing?
There really is no learning without doing. There is the appearance of learning without doing when we ask children to memorize stuff. But adults know that they learn best on the job, from experience, by trying things out. Children learn best that way, too. If there is nothing to actually do in a subject area we want to teach children it may be the case that there really isn't anything that children ought to learn in that subject area.
What are the top ten mistakes in education?
Mistake #1: Schools act as if learning can be disassociated from doing.
There really is no learning without doing. There is the appearance of learning without doing when we ask children to memorize stuff. But adults know that they learn best on the job, from experience, by trying things out. Children learn best that way, too. If there is nothing to actually do in a subject area we want to teach children it may be the case that there really isn't anything that children ought to learn in that subject area.
Mistake #2: Schools believe they have the job of assessment as part of their natural role.
Assessment is not the job of the schools. Products ought to be assessed by the buyer of those products, not the producer of those products. Let the schools do the best job they can and then let the buyer beware. Schools must concentrate on learning and teaching, not testing and comparing.
Mistake #3: Schools believe they have an obligation to create standard curricula.
Why should everyone know the same stuff? What a dull world it would be if everyone knew only the same material. Let children choose where they want to go, and with proper guidance they will choose well and create an alive and diverse society.
Mistake #4: Teachers believe they ought to tell students what they think it is important to know.
There isn't all that much that it is important to know. There is a lot that it is important to know how to do, however. Teachers should help students figure out how to do stuff the students actually want to do.
Mistake #5: Schools believe instruction can be independent of motivation for actual use.
We really have to get over the idea that some stuff is just worth knowing even if you never do anything with it. Human memories happily erase stuff that has no purpose, so why try to fill up children's heads with such stuff? Concentrate on figuring out why someone would ever want to know something before you teach it, and teach the reason, in a way that can be believed, at the same time.
Mistake #6: Schools believe studying is an important part of learning.
Practice is an important part of learning, not studying. Studying is a complete waste of time. No one ever remembers the stuff they cram into their heads the night before the exam, so why do it? Practice, on the other hand, makes perfect. But, you have to be practicing a skill that you actually want to know how to perform.
Mistake #7: Schools believe that grading according to age group is an intrinsic part of the organization of a school.
This is just a historical accident and it's a terrible idea. Age-grouped grades are one of the principal sources of terror for children in school, because they are always feeling they are not as good as someone else or better than someone else, and so on. Such comparisons and other social problems caused by age-similar grades cause many a child to have terrible confidence problems. Allowing students to help those who are younger, on the other hand, works well for both parties.
Mistake #8: Schools believe children will accomplish things only by having grades to strive for.
Grades serve as motivation for some children, but not for all. Some children get very frustrated by the arbitrary use of power represented by grades and simply give up.
Mistake #9: Schools believe discipline is an inherent part of learning.
Old people especially believe this, probably because schools were seriously rigid and uptight in their day. The threat of a ruler across the head makes children anxious and quiet. It does not make them learn. It makes them afraid to fail, which is a different thing altogether.
Mistake #10: Schools believe students have a basic interest in learning whatever it is schools decide to teach to them.
What kid would choose learning mathematics over learning about animals, trucks, sports, or whatever? Is there one? Good. Then, teach him mathematics. Leave the other children alone.
This list does not detail all that is wrong with school, neither do the teaching architectures we propose fix all that is wrong with education. Nevertheless they give an idea of where to begin.
Why are schools failing to teach our children?
Most six-year-olds can't wait to go to school on that first day in September. It's a sign of coming of age. They get to go to school like the big kids. For an alarmingly large number of these children, however, boredom, anxiety, and fear of learning quickly set in.
This happens because societies build schools that achieve much less than they promise, are frustrating for students, and generally fail to help children become adults who can think for themselves. Education has always been considered to be a process whereby some essential body of knowledge is transmitted to students; schools have simply been places where that transmission officially takes place. The development of flexible, inquiring minds has rarely been the primary consideration in the design of educational systems. Making students into proper members of society has usually been of much greater concern than developing students who are creative thinkers.
Today, the level of dissatisfaction and even outright anger at the educational system is tremendously high. We hear a great deal about the failure of our schools, about falling test scores, and about inequalities in education. A variety of solutions have been put on the table, solutions that run the gamut from applying corporate methods to gain efficiency to simply spending a lot more money. Some of the proposals to fix the situation are even more frightening than the situation they are trying to fix.
Clearly, the schools are a mess. Today's schools are organized around yesterday's ideas, yesterday's needs, and yesterday's resources (and they weren't even doing very well yesterday). Consider the most common classroom approach: one teacher standing in front of thirty children trying to get each one to be at the same place at the same time. This approach has the advantage of being relatively inexpensive, but it flies in the face of everything scientists have discovered about children's natural learning mechanisms, which are primarily experimentation and reflection. In other words, learning by doing. Consider also the concept of curriculum: that there is a particular body of knowledge everyone should know. This idea may comfort those who are concerned that our children know the "right stuff." Children, however, learn facts about the world because they feel the need to know them, often because these facts will help them do something they want to do. What is the right stuff for one may be the wrong or irrelevant stuff for another.
© Copyright 2010, Engines for Education