What needs to change, what is already changing, is what as a society we give value to. Education to further consumption or education to further contribution?
thanks Amy for sending me the above.. written by Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko - when someone responded to her post- why i unschool
They call me a radical and I laugh because I am about as radical as butter. On reflection, what I’ve tried to do over the years, in the belief that humans are natural born learners, is to safeguard those characteristics which are catalysts to learning and living: curiosity, a sense of wonder, humour, creativity, the welcoming of challenge and surprise.
That to me is not radical. Seen from this perspective, what is radical is school as we know it: compulsory curriculum dictated, 9 to 3, five days a week, 10 months a year, for 12 years. It’s only been that way for about 150 years, which on the scale of human history, is pretty recent. Me thinks this could be the ‘great experiment!’
imagine we redefine nclb - to be:
let's create an unschooling family situation for every learner (that's all ages) no? that would be a true democratic society/culture/community. is everyone known by someone.. someone that, because of that knowing, now strew/facilitate your curiosity on a daily basis.
here's how that might look today, if we were brave enough to change things up. [starting 2 min in at pods - Littky style]
1.5 hours each day with an advisory group.. in our town, 15,000 kids in district, that's 1 to 8.
say we have spaces like this for pods/advisory groups to meet.
redefining public ed:
1) be known by someone (taken care of with above daily groups - thinking even if groups not self-selected in the beginning people will know each other better than the 1 to 100+ we have now, that changes every year]
2) talk to yourself daily (app idea shows where that can lead)
