Recently I went through my inbox looking at past issues of the newsletter I receive called Project GiftED. While I don’t always find myself in agreement with everything said in the newsletter or on the blog – mostly because the blog entries aren’t always about education – I do find myself intrigued often enough to keep subscribing. I got really interested when I came across an article that was actually written by the folks at zenhabits entitled “27 Skills Your Child Need to Know That She’s Not Getting in School.”

Recognizing full well that I completed high school over 8 years ago and then entered the Computer Systems Technology program at Fanshawe College, I asked a colleague of mine, James Costa, what he thought about the list.  His response below has been edited for brevity and clarity:

I guess what it comes down to is life skills not being taught enough in life. You’re taught mathematics, and sure, in Accounting and Introduction to Business you’re taught basic accounting principles and that sort of deal, but you’re not taught how to pay bills, how to budget, taught about credit, or RRSPs, or anything like that. You learn that on your own, unfortunately.

In the TCDSB I was taught about positivity, etc, but that was because I was fortunate to be a part of the leadership program and did keynote speeches across Ontario. Some schools budget for having keynote speakers come to their school, but it isn’t often enough, and apparently the high school I went to was special because (at the time that I was there) they had 1 speaker per month. As for practical things like housework, organization skills, etc… Only organization was taught by some teachers in the beginning of the year as brushing up on tips on how to stay on top of their work and how to use your agenda. Pretty rudimentary ideas. Social skills were taught to me through clubs and extra currirculars I was a part of, but I can’t think of a time people were taught how to mediate conversations, find middle grounds, etc etc… You would only be taught these things if you were in the Guidance department for bashing a kid’s face in.

In terms of thinking and reading, those are taught in the curriculum. Every course has some factors they take into play when marking… I could find out what all of them are but one is Thinking and Inquiry. So yes, it’s marked and graded… They more just tell you to think about things. Really, English was the best for me learning these two skills as you had to not only read samples of Shakespeare, etc, but understand them and find hidden meanings. I was also fortunate all 3 years (missing my last English credit..) to have amazing English teachers and was in gifted English. Other than that, Thinking and Inquiry is important in all of the courses, so yeah, I guess you could say they “teach” that.

[...]

I interacted with different opportunities in high school and found them rewarding – in many ways it was through these opportunities that I learned all that I have today. Ask any of my friends about any of the above topics or the ones in the article and I guarantee they MAY know about 75% of them, and even 25% of them I guarantee is only knowledge of what they are, but have no experience in any of them (whether practical or textbook).

That’s coming from someone who only very recently completed high school, so he knows far better than I do what’s being taught now in K-12 than I do. Unfortunately it doesn’t sound like much has changed. I remember hearing from friends that they were being taught how to manually calculate taxes in the General math class, while the students in the Advanced class (myself included) were being taught how to calculate sin, tangents and plenty of other formulas I haven’t seen since.

I believe that the biggest hole that needs to be addressed the from zenhabits list are the items under Financial: saving, budgeting, investing, credit, etc. These are crucial life skills, yet we’re left to ask our parents or speak to (typically) biased financial advisors who may or may not be giving you good advice. I’ve seen the cycle of people who are bad with their money passing on their life lessons to their children and, consequently, their children are just as bad – if not worse – with their money. One way to help fix that would be to teach at least basic financial skills in school. Really, truly prepare children for the world instead of simply preparing them for college or university.

Some of the items under Practical and Happiness make sense too. Again, these are usually things you end up asking your parents or friends about – some basic information and teachings around these things would be great, like why you can’t run a diesel engine all the way to empty like you can a gas engine and finding purpose in life, or a real career you enjoy, instead of simply finding a job (Walmart “lifers,” I’m looking at you).

I guess my real issue is that most schools/courses/programs don’t prepare you for life – they prepare you for more school. The usefulness of that reaches an end for many people when they’re 17 or 18 years old, and for the majority of people by the time they reach their mid-20s. From there on out you need to be prepared for life and having moved away from home at 18, moving back for 18 months when I was 20, then back out again at 21 my lessons were learned the hard way. I’m better for it now, but having a better foundation for starting out on my own would have been helpful.

Not good enough anymore

While researching innovative approaches to educating our children, I came across a pilot project that was run this past summer at a single school in New York City. It’s been dubbed “School of One,” and the approach is very similar to the types of things I mentioned as possibilities in “The Textbook of the Future?” To quote this New York Times article:

The program [...] consists mainly of students working individually or in small groups on laptop computers to complete math lessons in the form of quizzes, games and worksheets. Each student must take a quiz at the end of each day; the results are fed into a computer program to determine whether they will move on to a new topic the next day.

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Now, he added, “we’re looking in a way that I don’t think anyone has looked at — at the way children learn, pacing them at their own pace, all of it tied to the mastery of content and skill and achievement.”

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Once the students arrive at school, they receive their individual playlists identifying the lessons they have to complete for the day, which could involve virtual tutoring online, computer worksheets or small-group lessons with a classroom teacher.

This is exactly the type of thing I think we should be moving toward! If done right, School of One should ensure that all students get the education they need, via the best learning style for them, and by the end of the year all of the students should have had the chance to complete all of the core curriculum along with, hopefully, some bonus activities based on their interests. One child that participated in this program actually said that the educational games he played making solving mathematical equations fun! Imagine that!

Skype in the Classroom - Better

If you pair up my vision of the future textbook with School of One, with a little additional effort and funding I think you have a solid base for the future of education. In the article, an HR professional for the New York City school where this took place said that running schools this way should cost about the same as running a school the way it’s done now. Many detractors of moving to more technology-focused schools claim that costs would be much higher — that may not hold up after all!

In fact, many of the things that schools traditionally pay a lot of money for are available for free, as pointed out by The Innovative Educator. Chief among them – Microsoft Live@edu and Google Apps for Education. Both are completely free (as in puppies). A school using Google Apps can provide word processing, spreadsheet, website building and presentation software along with e-mail completely free to students and teachers! Just make sure the Internet connection is up and running (or install Google Gears for offline access).

I guess the chief reason for this post is to point out that things are happening despite the naysayers. School of One is exactly what I hope my son will experience when he begins school. With some luck, funding and pressure from parents, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for those of us who believe that the continuous evolution of major systems is the only way forward.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Clearly I’m not expecting our children to have access to Sports Illustrated magazine while at school! But while many other nations, along with some districts here in Canada and the US, have been experimenting with laptops in schools, in one way I’m glad it hasn’t gone very far here. Why? Because tablets, such as the one seen in the video, are finally far enough along the technology evolution scale that they’re actually useful.

What I mean by that is you no longer need a stylus to interact with the computer. What I’m envisioning, instead of magazines, is an era where all students have laptops with instant access to the textbooks the school district (or other governing body) chooses and the textbooks are always up-to-date — almost like Wikipedia, but not provided by Wikipedia (though they can be a part of the equation).

OLPC

When I went to school, my fellow students and I constantly found factual and grammatical errors in our textbooks; textbooks that were often written the year we were born (though we were now 10, 13 or 18 years old). History textbooks that incorrectly stated a series of events or attribute discoveries to incorrect people (Christopher Columbus was certainly not the first to “discover” America, the Vikings found North America long before that) or contained incorrect answers to mathematical equations. How about a world where such things can be flagged, submitted to the publisher and revisions can be distributed as soon as a change is made?

I’m also thinking of an era where contextual menus let you share important finds within project groups (highlighting text and sending it around as something the group needs for its final report), or simply sharing interests with the rest of the class. An era where knowledge doesn’t end at the textbook, but where the menu can provide links to Wikipedia entries, search engines, videos on National Geographic or Discovery and the like. An era where a child’s natural curiousity for knowledge can be satiated almost instantly!

One other way this helps students is that such dynamic textbooks could easily bend to accommodate for other learning styles – visual, audible, and tactile.

Maybe your child learns best by seeing someone else perform an experiment. Perhaps they’d like to have both the audio and video running, so that they can follow along themselves but glance at the video (plus rewind and fast forward) to make sure they’re doing things right. Maybe they’d like to have a virtual sandbox on-screen where they can interact with a 2D or 3D representation before doing it in the real world. The possibilities are endless!

One major issue I had when attending school, especially getting into high end math, was that I experienced a lack of support at home. My parents are loving people, and smart, but the day they remember how to solve a quadratic equation — something they probably haven’t seen in over 20 years — is the day I volunteer for a demotion! What can be provided to students is a social networking-type area where they can help each other out after hours. Log on, chat about friends and gossip, whatever kids talk about these days… but let there be a dedicated area where kids can ask for and get help either from  within their school, other schools or possibly even the publisher.

At the end of the day, I don’t care who produces the textbooks – just that they work well and students are able to interact with them in a way that it properly enhances their educational experience. If they can’t do that, then clearly it’s not worth pursuing. The other obvious caveat is how would schools pay for textbooks that are constantly updated? Well I’d like to see a model where schools pay for a subscription to the textbook on a yearly basis and the vendor guarantees that the textbook is up-to-date and that any updates can be pushed as soon as they are verified.

If you would like to see the official demo video, you can watch it below (warning: contains images & video of SI Swimsuit Edition).

Click here to view the embedded video.

UPDATE 01/28/10: Good news! I’ve found two organizations doing exactly what I’m talking about above. Check out Inkling and CK-12.