Free topic! Whoo! I'm going to feel weird if I don't start out with a quote, so I went and found one.
Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
- G. M. Trevelyan
This completely ties into what Tony Wagner talks about all through The Global Achievement Gap. We're worried too much about the "what" and not about the "how" or "why." With all the information available at the click of a button via the internet, memorizing information by rote so you can spew it out really doesn't serve any purpose. Instead, you need to know how to find the information you need, decipher what's good and and what's not, and synthesize everything together.
You have to try to teach toward what skills are needed in the workplace today. As Wagner says in the beginning of his book, employers can teach the technical skills. It's the creative/critical thinking and questioning that needs to be taught, or rather retained. Children's imagination needs to be encouraged and grown. Too often imagination gets squashed out of kids because of too much testing and not enough encouragement.
TBC!
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