Education Developed Creatively
On the other hand, I was excited and delighted to attend an event last Saturday put on by an organization called Pratham. My friend and client AGK invited me to join him and his wife Shanti (both CEOs of their own companies) to attend this event. They are charter members.
The program was called: MediaX - Last Mile Solutions in Education
and was held at Cordura Hall on Stanford's campus. It was about developing education in India and elsewhere that focused on teaching people how to learn, how to problem-solve, and how to make decisions. One of the speakers, Dr. Paul Kim at Stanford presented what he calls: 21st Century Value-Centered Education Ecosystem and I was so excited about his ideas that I could hardly sit still.Dr. Kim starts his teaching process by having the students develop questions about the material they have read or heard. Then they share the questions with each other so that not only do they have to understand the material, they have to be able to create reasonable right and wrong questions and be able to explain why they are correct or incorrect. Imagine how this stimulates actual thinking. In addition, they work together, from early childhood, in cooperative and engaged teams - teaching and learning from each other.
WOW! This is so much better than the rote memorization and regurgitation so many students are forced to endure.
Of course this method is so in line with what I advocate and the way I teach and even the way I create essay test questions. I want people to think for themselves and to be able to offer explanations for the conclusions they reach. Involving students in the process of learning is far more effective than a lengthy stand-up lecture.
Yet, in the audience Saturday were those who feared the new method as something other than actually teaching reading, writing and arithmetic.
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