7 Questions (in no particular order)
·
Why, in an age of increased customization and
choice are schools still shoe-horning kids into an essentially uniform
experience rather than finding innovative ways to allow them to make their
programs more of a reflection of their passions?
·
Why is the overwhelming majority of students’ time
still spent in seats in classrooms?
·
Why do we maintain a system of siloed academic
departments that creates artificial divides between realms of knowledge that
are inherently interconnected?
·
Why is the preponderance of the assessments that
determine students' grades (and, to some extent, their fates) conducted in
more or less the same way that students were assessed fifty or more years ago?
·
Why are we so utterly beholden to an 8-3:30
Monday-Friday schedule?
·
Why, when we know that enormous losses happen
for every student during a 2 ½ month annual break, do we adhere to a school
calendar that was designed to ensure an ample supply of child farm labor during
the summer months?
·
Why are so many of our choices driven by the fear that our students
will miss out on particular and discrete nuggets of knowledge, when
what we hear over and over from those in the collegiate and professional
domains is that they want their students/employees to be adaptive learners and
thinkers rather than walking fact containers?
