Exploring Education
January 20, 2010
Colin Taufer is the headmaster of Delphi Academy, my children’s school. He is a writer, one I respect a lot. Recently he wrote this piece for his newsletter. He kindly gave me permission to reprint it here.
Exploring Education
by Colin Taufer
Ours is a technology driven society. Every day newer, better, faster, smaller, more powerful micro-gadgets hit the street, pushing yesterday’s older, slower, less powerful, not-so-micro-gadgets aside. The advance is swift. Technology marches on.
As a child, one of my most treasured micro-gadgets was a Sony Walkman. I could listen to an album’s worth of my favorite music on a compact cassette tape; it was my own personal concert. The sound quality was fair. The music would speed or slow according to battery strength. But it was cutting edge technology and it was fantastic.
Comparing the technology of the Walkman to today’s is laughable. With no moving parts, today’s digital music device can hold 40,000 songs and is a fraction of the size of the Walkman. And if that’s not enough, it’ll also store and display 200 hours of video. Incredible!
So what happened to yesterday’s micro-gadget maker?
The answer lies in this famous quote by educator Dr. Laurence Peter: “Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.”
Unfortunately, yesterday’s micro-gadget maker, the expert in the technology of compact cassettes, is a master of a dying technology. We can hope his expertise advanced apace with the technology and he is today gainfully employed in a related field. If this is the case, and we hope it is, we can correctly assume his core competencies, his ability to study, to read, to mathematically compute and to reason, were fully achieved in his schooling as a child.
But what of the micro-gadget maker lacking these solid academic basics? Without these components of competence in place, like yesterday’s discarded micro-gadget, his ability to make his way in today’s world has vanished. He has gone from king to pauper.
How does the educator of the present prepare today’s students to be competent with the unknown technologies of tomorrow?
The answer lies in the teaching of the basic academics, the traditional core competencies: reading, writing and arithmetic. Beyond that the teacher must add still more competencies: the ability to study, to communicate, to research and to reason.
All of these abilities, fully taught to a very high standard, give the young student a firm foundation upon which all future education can be built. And from there he can build his own kingdom no matter where the tides of technology and change carry him.
For, as the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle said, “The king is the man who can.”
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Laura,
This is not a topic that I write about on my blog; but I have been a Trustee for a private school for the last 3 years, and have a keen interest in education. I believe that the biggest challenge that educators have today is how to incorporate technology and, at the same time, address the accompanying reduction in attention span that today’s technology seems to induce (in both adults and children)
This morning I came across an article on TechCrunch about an Israeli company that is offering innovative education models based on trying to address the challenges that these changes present to educators. It would be a good read and should provoke some lively discussion. Here’s the link to the article –
http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/02/israels-time-to-know-aims-to-revolutionize-the-classroom/
I’ll follow the discussion via RSS.
Phil Lauterjung
comment by Phil Lauterjung — February 2, 2010 @ 12:36 pm
Dear Mr. Lauterjung,
Thank you for your response to my article.
Without a doubt, one of the chief concerns for all educators must be the confidence that they are properly preparing students for the ever-changing, ever-accelerating pace of technology advancement.
To that end, and as you saw in my article, I am a zealous advocate of a thorough grounding in academic basics in young students. This is a prime ingredient of success. The true professional “techie” is very well read and adept at all math types.
Thank you again for your comments.
I look forward to taking in the article you linked.
Colin Taufer
comment by Colin Taufer — February 3, 2010 @ 2:56 pm
I like the article, though i think it misses the actual heart of the whole problem: the actual heart.
I agree that the basics are what’s needed. There has to be a fundamental foundation of skills within a child to help them learn, grow and explore, but at the same time these skills are meaningless if they don’t have the desire and I daresay passion for learning as well.
Do I have experience with this? yes. I am a father of 11 children, and to boot, they are all home schooled as well.
Great article. Fill them with the passion and the basic tools and a child can pave a road to any location in life they desire.
-Jaime Buckley
comment by Jaime Buckley — February 8, 2010 @ 7:15 pm
Dear Jamie,
I am sure that Colin will also want to respond, but I wanted to thank you for your comment and applaud you (I am now standing up, so consider it a standing ovation) for having 11 children and teaching them with obvious love and passion.
I work with children a lot (I’m a chess coach as well as a freelance writer) and I have definitely observed and learned that children need a purpose in order to learn. The purpose sparks that passion to learn.
I’m interested to hear Colin’s thoughts on this!
comment by Friendlywriter — February 8, 2010 @ 7:38 pm
Here’s an interesting exercise. What is the stereotypical image today’s media projects when portraying children in kindergarten? For me this is an image of smiling young faces bouncing their way through a day of exciting activities. Every step of the way they are engaged and bright. Every subject one of wonder. Contrast this with the stereotypical image at the opposite end of the spectrum – the high school student. At best this student is disinterested, bored. They’re asleep on their desks, flirting or shooting spitballs across the classroom.
What happened to that child’s enthusiasm for learning? Where did it go?
Does the error lie with him? Have the synapses in his cerebellum lost their juice?
Has the curriculum failed this student? Has how you feel become more important than competence?
Are the teachers underpaid and over worked? Have the teachers’ unions bogged down the system?
Are the teachers themselves products of the same failed system?
Does the fault lie with the families? Are they too busy to care? Too trusting to believe otherwise?
Is the media the culprit?
Are schools to strict? Too lenient?
What do you think?
comment by Colin Taufer — February 11, 2010 @ 5:19 pm
I have worked in the public schools for nearly 30 years. I am an occupational therapist and work with learning disabled, autistic and behavior disorder children. I have seen many changes in the way children respond to education. The educators are faced with many challenges. There seem to be more children with attention and behavioral problems than before.
Children spend very little time really playing. The spend more and more time in front of a TV either playing a video game or watching TV. They spend less and less time playing board games or playing outside. Children expect to be passively entertained in the classroom as well. I have seen some great teachers mix technology to teach basic comcepts and inspire passion in the child. I have seen that same teacher get a class of disruptive children that she cannot inspire.
It is difficult to pin point the problem. I think parents are so busy trying to make ends meet that letting their child play video games is easy. Before video games the same parent would have found it easy to let their child spend hours outside playing.
The teachers are also faced with more teaching challenges. Special needs children are integrated into the classrooms and they must teach to the needs of all students.
We all need to work together as a team to inspire our children. Even though I hate video games some of those same children have grown up to do amazing things with digital media and some have grown up to be doctors.
I dont think anyone can prepair a child to be ready for tomarrows technology. I got my first calculator in High school and it could add, subtract and multiply. I typed my papers on a manual typwriter. I built my own website, blog, and do an online business. I am sure that my teachers could not have prepaired me for any of this. They did teach me to think and problem solve.
comment by Julia Lindsey — February 12, 2010 @ 7:14 am
Well I guess I’ll jump back in here. By the looks of everyone’s comments this is clearly a complex issue. One matter I would like to clarify was the one that Jamie brought up about heart. I never intended to imply that heart should not be highly considered. I once had a pastor who would often say that the heart of the matter is the matter of one’s heart. I believe that to be true. By the way, major kudos to Jamie and educating 11 children. Wow!
I won’t even attempt to answer all of the questions on Colin’s list, but they are all worth pondering. There are definitely many, many issues that impact a child’s education; and they aren’t all in the classroom. I think one problem is priorities. I have heard many parents say that the education of their children is a priority, but I don’t always see that the way they live their life reinforces that.
I applaud all of you for your passion regarding this subject and thank you Laura for getting this discussion going. I look forward to reading more comments.
comment by Phil Lauterjung — February 12, 2010 @ 3:10 pm