Roger Schank’s Top 10 Mistakes in Education

[proud2BlibKansan]

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.

The remaining 6 mistakes: http://preilly.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/roger-schanks-top-10-mistakes-in-education/

[msongs]

1. well isn't this a bunch of out of touch hooey...

1) lots of merit here. einstein said why memorize stuff when you can look it up. so, let's don't have kids memorize times tables and when they need to calculate their hours and pay, they can look up each step instead of knowing 5 x 5 in their memories.

2) umm, ok. good thing companies no longer have to assess their own products before putting them on the market. a bit of assessment is a good thing along the way, schools are overburdened with poor quality assessments tho.

3) "let children choose where they want to go"..yeah right, in a class with 40-50 kids, that's gonna be real doable. Probably works well in a class with 10 kids and NO standardized testing.

4)oh well...

this guy is not in touch with what teachers are required to do as terms of employment, at least in public schools. His changes would be nice in many ways tho.

Msongs

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. I was with him till I got to #3

No one gets to choose where they are going or what they are going to do in the adult work world. We aren't doing our kids any favors when we give them this choice.

[tonysam]

3. It's a bunch of mumbo jumbo, I am afraid.

There are a LOT of mistakes in education, but these aren't it.