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About...
Sam Smith, PhD, is an entrepreneur and former university professor who believes the transformational power of education is our best hope for solving the myriad problems confronting our nation. Those looking for quick fixes can move along, though. It took decades to dig the hole we're currently in, and only a long-term commitment to teaching and learning can help us climb out.
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It’s been June since you posted anything on the “Dr. Slammy 4 Prez” blog. You still running? The election is less than a year away now, time to get to politikin’ if’n you’s serious.
I am brought here as our school explores “A Culture of Learning”. Reading your definition of this provides a good sense of what the cultural mainstream generally expresses as desirable from education. I don’t see this as necessarily good or bad, just different. The results are already present.
I don’t align with your core view that the focus of education ought to be in solving the “myriad problems confronting our nation”. Instead I suggest that if we value education highly enough that we are unafraid of the well informed, skeptical, ever-questioning, active human beings that will result, the problems will vanish.
Our system of education was best and most recently described by President Obama who said that its purpose was to “train workers”. Oh, there were some other high-sounding phrases mixed in, but this is basically the core of what our government (and corporations that operate it) considers important.
I do not wonder if we are best left allowing utilitarianism to define our learning culture, but rather to make such a definition on the basis of what students – inherently curious and able learners – bring to the table.
Thoughts?
I don’t align with your core view that the focus of education ought to be in solving the “myriad problems confronting our nation”. Instead I suggest that if we value education highly enough that we are unafraid of the well informed, skeptical, ever-questioning, active human beings that will result, the problems will vanish.
I think if you read the entirety of what I write here it will become clear that I see these two things as one and the same. I think we’re probably framing the same idea in two ways – one more active than the other, sure. At the core, though, the argument is that if you prioritize genuine education, problems will get solved. Whether you choose to see this as ends-justify-means or means-justifies-end I don’t think ultimately matters.