Why Learning isn’t a Means to an End
It’s actually an end in itself, which is something this testing-focused culture of ours seems to miss.
This short animated video was commissioned by the guys who did South Park, and illustrates this beautifully. (thanks Eric)
August 6th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
lol This is awesome!! Bravo!
August 7th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
The musical composition analogy is great. I know I definitely have had moments of putting things off until the next “level,” only to realize there’ll always be another one. This video illustrates this concept well.
January 7th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
WOW! It has taken us hundreds of years to realize that our education system doesn’t work for a majority of kids and testing with CSAP doesn’t help either. It just emphasizes that we need to approach education differently.
I taught school for many years and loved teaching creatively, but that became outlawed by CSAP.
Even in kindergarten, where I volunteer, education continues in the same hum-drum way. Teachers who have a brain and a spark of imagination hate it!
What’s really depressing is that administrators in school districts don’t realize that we need to teach innovatively. They just keep on buying textbooks that are used for tornado drills and dusting off the cobwebs on old materials that sit on the shelf because a new series of learning comes along every couple of years, and that gets eventually shoved aside and replaced by a newer series. Yet, we still have drop out rates that escalate. When will educators get it?
There should also be pods of learners instead of grades. Not every six year to needs to repeat kindergarten just because they missed the cut-off date! Many of them are more skilled than some second graders.
And why aren’t there two teachers in every room. Why are there still subjects like math,reading,
science, and social studies, when there could be learning of problems and enigmas? I see learning as more integrated.
Cheers to those who are thinking of education as an international endeavor! Bravo!
January 7th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
WOW! It has taken us hundreds of years to realize that our education system doesn’t work for a majority of kids and testing with CSAP doesn’t help either. It just emphasizes that we need to approach education differently.
I taught school for many years and loved teaching creatively, but that became outlawed by CSAP.
Even in kindergarten, where I volunteer, education continues in the same hum-drum way. Teachers who have a brain and a spark of imagination hate it!
What’s really depressing is that administrators in school districts don’t realize that we need to teach innovatively. They just keep on buying textbooks that are used for tornado drills and dusting off the cobwebs on old materials that sit on the shelf because a new series of learning comes along every couple of years, and that gets eventually shoved aside and replaced by a newer series. Yet, we still have drop out rates that escalate. When will educators get it?
There should also be pods of learners instead of grades. Not every six year old needs to repeat kindergarten just because they missed the cut-off date! Many of them are more skilled than some second graders.
And why aren’t there two teachers in every room. Why are there still subjects like math,reading,
science, and social studies, when there could be learning of problems and enigmas? I see learning as more integrated.
Cheers to those who are thinking of education as an international endeavor! Bravo!