I'd thought this was self-evident, but apparently it bears repeating:
Education is hard. Education is a hard problem that has not yet been solved.* This is significant, considering how long humans have been working on it. It means that there probably is no quick fix that will solve education, otherwise it would already have been found. This is why I am deeply sceptical of anyone who claims to know how to fix education. Especially if that claim is accompanied by statements like "...and it's actually so simple!", or even "natural". If you think you have a simple solution, you are very likely to be wrong. The science of education, as confused as it may seem, shows one thing very clearly: there are no catch-all solutions. Different approaches are required for different groups of people, different contexts, different topics and skills. This is not the same as saying that all methods are equally valid. On the contrary, it means that if we want to improve education, we have to focus on very specific contexts, purposes, and population groups, one at a time. (This is one of the reasons why we're starting a micro-school for 12-14 year-olds instead of aiming for a larger age group.) We have to look very closely at what works and what does not, while resisting the temptation to generalize each insight and proclaim it as the key to fixing everything. Improving education is hard work. There are no shortcuts. * To add a little more nuance to the this blanket statement, here are two caveats: One, some aspects of knowledge and skill transfer probably have been solved, e.g. by methods such as apprenticeship that have long ago achieved fixation. Two, our circumstances are probably changing faster now than they used to for most of human history, so even methods of education that have worked before may not be appropriate any more. In particular, merely transferring the knowledge and skills of one generation to the next will not suffice, because the next generation will need to be capable of many more and different things than we are.
0 Comments
|
OPENschoolOur new page: Archiv
August 2017
Kategorien |