Monday, July 5, 2010

charles leadbeater

education innovation in the slums 

Charles went looking for radical new forms of education -- and found them in the slums of Rio and Kibera, where some of the world's poorest kids are finding transformative new ways to learn. And this informal, disruptive new kind of school, he says, is what all schools need to become.


vantage point determines everything you see.
  • the question you ask will determine much of the answer that you get
  • where do you look to see what education could become
  • last 20 yrs - go to finland - may be boring and depressive and high suicide rate - but by god they're doing it right
  • let's look somewhere else - innovation often comes from best - but also comes from places of need (monkeyhill in rio)
  • where you find the fastest growing young populations of the world
  • 1994 - cdi - owner of 1st laptop in brazil

education works by pull not push 
  • having a compulsory curriculum doesn't make sense
  • the idea of a curriculum is irrelevant
  • need to start ed by things that make sense to a person in their setting

  • our ed system has a pay off - but way down the pike
waiting is too long if you're poor

imagine ed system that started from questions not from knowledge to be imparted.. or starts from a game
teach through, attract to learning because it's a dance, music, whatever project...
attract people through that into learning not adding it on after all the learning has been done and you've eaten your cognitive greens
music, etc, as a technology of learning

how do you get learning when there are no teachers... or teachers are teaching another agenda?
find ways through tech
school in a bus
treat learning as something productive - not an analytical activity

trendiest schools do this - that its' productive - but in poor locations - that's the only choice

roll out franchises?... why can't we do it like chinese restaurants. ? there is no chain
mcdonalds scales, chinese spreads















the trouble with staying in improve - not enough teachers
doing more of this won't lead to deep ed

so that's why we need  
3 more kinds of innovation















1) reinvention: recognizably schools but look different, big picture, 14 coonscape sonnin in sweden, jaroget in northern queens, highly collab, highly personalized, learning that starts from questions and problems
but because so many issues are just in schools - they're in family and community - also need















2) efforts to supplement: italy reggio, harlem childrens - jeffry canada, change culture of 10000 families in harlem; 
completely new and radical thinking , radicalism of the kind we haven't imagined















3) transform - can imagine getting info to people in new and different ways

schoolification of the world
2015

radical thinking is more possible and more needed than ever..


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