Question Everything – Education Is Horked Part 3

What is the capitol of the state of Montana? Who is the 32nd president of the United States? Did you know the answer to either one without doing a web search? I didn’t. But it took me about 3 seconds to find the answer to each question. In primary schools across the US, we spend valuable time in the classroom learning the facts about our country. This time is spent every day, in every classroom. Think about how much time is actually consumed nationwide on just these two things.

Now, take those two questions and ask them a different way. Give three reasons why the settling of the state of Montana is important to the fabric of the United States. Why was Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal so well received, even though it radically affected the reach of the Federal government into our personal lives?

The first approach teaches someone to look at facts and spit them back out. Is this an important skill, when literally any fact is less than three seconds away? Is asking “what” nearly as important as asking “why”? Kids want to know “why” about everything. Why do I have to do this? Why did that happen? And yet, in school, we spend a tremendous amount of time telling them just the facts.

Being able to contextualize data and discern it’s true meaning. I would submit that there is no more valuable skill than this particular one, regardless of your occupation. In researching the two questions I posed above, I would probably find that Roosevelt was the 32nd President, and that Helena was the capitol of Montana. I would also have context about each piece of data. I would learn about the Great Depression, what a depression is, what might have caused it, poverty, war, the resiliency of the country, and the lasting effects of decisions like creating Social Security.

Maybe it’s your opinion that a first grader cannot be expected to answer these kinds of questions, or that learning facts is important as a skill. And, you might be right. I am not an educator. What I do know is that the effect of the current methodology is seen in the high school students that I interact with every basketball season. Kids want to be told what to do in every situation. “If this happens, what do I do?” I inevitably answer this question with “What do you think you should do?” The blank stare I get back shows the lack of ability to take data in ( facts ) and apply it in different ways depending on the situation.

My point in all of this is that it’s time to question everything about how we are educating our kids. Why do we ask our kids to memorize the presidents of the United States? Or the state capitols?

Is there a better way to teach the skills kids really need, while weaving facts into the discussion? Is there a better model for education than putting 30 kids in a room and trying to teach them all the same thing the same way? What would it look like to have radically different days in primary, middle and high school? What if your kids spent their days taking classes online instead of in a classroom? What if teachers were freelance educators, teaching the areas of their expertise to smaller, more targeted groups of students rather than larger classrooms?

I would love to hear what you think.