There has been a great deal of discussion (in this class and others as well as at the Ministry level and beyond) about how education must change. Our government wants a higher graduation rate, our kids are stimulated in drastically different ways now than in years previous (see article on children and technology), and teachers are caught in the middle between teaching the basics (on a traditional level) or keeping with the times and teaching kids with technology at the forefront (see article on pros and cons of using technology in the classroom). Education clearly becomes a juggling act for many schools and teachers.
Sir Ken Robinson suggests what schools ought to look like in his 19 minute Ted Talk. I would be interested to hear others thoughts on this presentation. In particular, I appreciated his comments on teaching vs. learning. I agree that many times, we see "teaching" occurring but limited "learning" to match. How do we ensure these match? Are standardized tests a way to help measure this? The comment regarding Finland (Sahlberg's article supporting Sir Ken Robinson's claims) is an interesting one. We often aspire to be like Finland, in terms of their achievement (as measured on a standardized test, by the way) but seem to have a number of barriers preventing us from doing so.
Do you think an education system, as Sir Ken Robinson has described, can exist?
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