Wednesday, July 13, 2011

trust

i was driving today. with my kids in the car. and i started thinking...

how is it that when we drive on the street, daily, with our children even, we trust that others will not drive into us - resulting in death - the death of our children.

yet - in regard to learning - we can't trust curiosity enough to guide learners to deeper learning and a better life , a happy, fulfilled life - the life of our children.
even when a worst case scenario might be - that at first many will appear to be lazy, so we will look lazy. and then yet, after a time, there may be a small few still yet appearing to be lazy.

so instead, because of our fear of students owning their learning, we impose a standard agenda - resulting in highly stressed kids who are quite often mimicking the status quo.
as said by our kids - 75% - have either *cheated, or studied right before the test and will surely forget it. so they have the appearances of being ok.
luckily - they believe 15% are getting it. or are they? are they getting it and not loving it. seems a risk there as well.
and there is tons of evidence of this, why we keep ignoring it, i'm not quite sure.

seems the street and compulsory ed, both, involve much more risk than self-directed learning


*cheating:
a lot of brilliance in the way kids get thru the system. we just happen to call it cheating because it's against our agenda. really. we should at the very least, tap into how they are coping with the way we're doing school.
no?


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