Changing the way we look at education

I have tried and am currently working on getting in touch Deanna Mayers. She is the curriculum coordinator for blendedschools.net which is a website that develops curriculum for grades K-12. What made me want to get in touch with her was a presentation that she posted on twitter about how to become a maker educator. This is the idea of allowing kids the opportunity to build something with their own hands. Throughout the process they will be able to express creativity while at the same time learning about math, science and engineering. Now this is an idea worth pondering.

http://www.slideshare.net/jgerst1111/educator-as-a-maker-educator

Since I have yet to hear from her I have been perusing the internet for ideas behind educational reform. I was immediately drawn back to Sir Kenneth Robinson. He is a member of an organization called RSA or Royal Society for the Arts. Their mission is this, “21^st century Enlightenment: enriching society through ideas and action.” Sir Robinson has taken a particular look at the educational system and pondered how we can improve it and what actions need to be taken. He mentions that our current system of education was “designed and conceived for a different age… during the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment and in the economic circumstances of the industrial revolution.” That was a few hundred years ago. It served its purpose when it was initially created but now it is simply outdated. With the advancement of technology we have all the information we could imagine at our fingertips.

Most companies now are looking for people who will be creative and innovative. Another important skill is adaptability since technology and the world around us seems to be changing so rapidly. Most schools are not focusing on developing these skills within their students because they are still hung up on the idea of what education used to be a few hundred years ago. This thinking will have detrimental effects on our economy in the future if we don’t act now. We need to start making changes from the bottom, up. We need to truly take a look at our schools and see them NOT as some sort of factory spitting out the next generation of workers but as a living and breathing organism, students are the future. Kids have a natural desire to learn but we snuff that out as soon as we begin to "educate" them. It may seem like a radical idea, but what if we let them govern their own education? Allowed them the opportunity to learn about what intrigues them? What if we let them use the technology that is so readily available for them? I believe that this would foster creativity, it would nourish their natural desire to learn and help them to understand the world around them. This goes back to being a maker educator. Giving students the opportunity to become producers instead of consumers, to learn how to collaborate with their peers, to be creative and innovative. These young thinkers have great potential, they are our future. Let's not fail them.