I came across this wonderful article in Wired magazine.
“But you do have one thing that makes you the equal of any kid in the world,” Juárez Correa said. “Potential.”
He looked around the room. “And from now on,” he told them, “we’re going to use that potential to make you the best students in the world.”
Paloma was silent, waiting to be told what to do. She didn’t realize that over the next nine months, her experience of school would be rewritten, tapping into an array of educational innovations from around the world and vaulting her and some of her classmates to the top of the math and language rankings in Mexico.
“So,” Juárez Correa said, “what do you want to learn?”
It gave me chills when I read that part.
As I have been saying, I don’t think you can fix the public education system as long as students don’t get any say about what they learn. You can’t get kids to learn by force feeding them facts to memorize. If they get to choose what they want to learn, they will learn. That is the key to learning.
Amen. So happy to see this in print.
Education is not something that is done to someone, it is the lighting of that fire. (Doesn’t that sound vaguely familiar?) When we trust our students, when we engage them in the process of their own lives, their learning will come naturally and with great enthusiasm.
By: darleensaunders on October 21, 2013
at 12:39 pm
It seems to me that people once knew this. What happened?
Thanks for commenting!!
By: crudbasher on October 23, 2013
at 1:20 pm
An important lesson in itself – that students can CHOOSE – DIRECT – EMBRACE their own learning.
By: Sue Benson on October 22, 2013
at 8:45 pm
[…] The Key To Learning (educationstormfront.wordpress.com) […]
By: Currently Reading: The Next Steve Jobs From Wired Magazine | Consilient Interest on October 24, 2013
at 7:48 am