Everyone seems to agree that education is not working in our country today. The problem is that our current educators all learned the old fashioned way. Classroom lectures and memorizing things from text books. Repetitive drilling with math problems to teach mathematics. Basically, our generation, as all other civilized students did before us, learned largely by rote memorization.
In primitive cultures, education wasn't just about getting a better job. It was about survival. Education for hunter-gatherers and even into the dawn of civilization and the requisite move to agriculture was a matter of "do the job." Whatever skills you needed to learn, you picked up as you went along or you died. Everyone learned by doing.
Put another way, life itself was a project. The completion of the project required the individual to learn certain skills.
Today's formal education is done in precisely the opposite sequence. We spend years drilling and memorizing formulas and techniques. When the student asks why they need to learn these things, they are told that it will all come together later. Perhaps the real question is why this works for many students.
Take math for example: We teach our children basic arithmetic. We either tell them not to worry about why they need to know it or we give them answers that seem vague and evasive to them. We progress them through algebra and geometry with the same lack of reason. If they haven't gotten bored and dropped out, we begin teaching them applications for some of their hard-won knowledge and skills near the end of their twelve years of education.
It would be great if every student went on to college, but that isn't the reality. For many students, high school is as far as their education will go. For them, we need a new approach. This new approach might even help students traditionally considered successful, to excel.
Project-Based learning can be used to make the student decide to learn mathematics, writing and presentation skills, research skills, history or practically any other skill. It is all up to the educators to select and guide the projects in directions that require skills that are desireable.
Skills learned because they are needed for an immediate goal the student wants to achieve are skills learned forever.
Well, this post hits home with me on many levels. I am taking a class on how early man learned to make tools, and how the planning and physical processes of making tools alters the brain. The professor is an experimental anthropologist, and he's got a big pile of flint in front of the anthro building, and he gets people to chip away at it while wearing a techno glove used in special effects and brain sensors. I bet Dad would have loved being one of the guinea pigs for this. You mention math as a subject kids don't get the reason for learning. Well, take them out rock climbing and then they will see how their life depends on it! Check out this video: http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/2010/07/math-of-rock-climbing.html
ReplyDeleteAnd finally, coincidentally, I also recently wrote something on problem-based learning, which I think is basically project-based learning you refer to. A bunch of high school kids learned the periodic table of elements by turning it into a rap video. I say, why not? Wish I had been able to learn that way when I was in high school. http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/2010/06/first-20-elements-elements-elements.html
I agree education is not working today, but I believe Mr. Clark is mistaken in his assessment of the root cause. Without basic knowledge driven into young fertile minds, not even the simplest of “projects” can or will be brought to fruition. This I see is the greatest debilitation of today’s youth. We no longer require them to become fluent in the basics, so how can we expect them to excel at higher learning.
ReplyDeleteMr. Clark makes several excellent points here, the most important one being that the learner must “want” to achieve the goal of whatever is set before them. In today’s society there are a great multitude of diversions and distractions vying for the attention of youth, none of them having anything to do with their survival (unfortunately). As a result, we have a society fraught with malcontents that have no ambition, nor personal goals to achieve. They only think to pursue: “what/when will I eat, how can I beat my buddy at the next Wi game, I deserve to own the latest and greatest Air-Jordan’s,” and “why should I learn ‘that’ when I will never use it to further my music career” (even though I have absolutely no talent), and “who cares about tomorrow, my parents will take care of it.”
As an instructor myself and having dealt with learners at the primary / secondary school levels, and now college, I would consider it a lofty goal to expect a teacher in public skrewls to tailor education to each individual learners wants and desires. (I use the term learner as we all are continually learning, whether good or bad, but a student must want to be involved in learning.)
I am a strong advocate of rote memorization as it is the foundation of what will develop the mind as one matures into critical thinking. Without the basic knowledge to follow (passed on from generation-to-generation), not finding the right answer in the shortest possible steps can in and of itself become a confidence destroyer, leading to capitulation in skills building. (Which is where I believe our education failure lies today.)
I acknowledge a great tool that project based approach to teaching can be (for older critical thinkers), but it will be useless if the learner does not already possess the knowledge from which to push beyond the most mundane of, much less correct solutions. Rote memorization of mathematical calculation/times-tables, english punctuation/grammar, phonetics/word structure (i.e. ebonics?) are key to further success. (Teach them to fish…)
I believe the path to Education Reform is to return to the basics of how ALL OF US LEARNED. Have WE not been successful?
James A. Chambers (The Electric Professor)