Education Perspectives

False Mastery

A while back, I watched this video by Dr. Tae, aka "Your skateboarding and physics professor".  This video is worth watching! 

Dr. Tae — Building A New Culture Of Teaching And Learning from Dr. Tae on Vimeo.

One idea he speaks about is how testing and grades can provide false certification or false mastery.  He emphasizes that getting an A in a science course isn't indicative of subject mastery.  Mastery of anything takes large amounts of time and work, and the ability to memorize and test well has nothing to do with subject mastery. 

I am disturbed by what follows here.  No Child Left Behind is very much centered around testing and when school districts do well on tests, we assume mastery.  We assume that the school is doing a good job educating our students.  That's false mastery nationwide!

Think about that......

Schools Lag Behind

A post by Stephen Denning which highlighted a talk by Rachel Botsman pointedly captured my interest.  Rachel speaks about the changing face of consumerism.  Her focus is on how social networking and other collaborative internet sites are moving our world from ownership to user-ship.  She speaks of an emerging and even more connected society.

 

There is a major paradigm shift happening, yet the American educational system remains principally in the industrial age.  Most school districts ban the use of electronic devices, yet, today’s students are connected to one another by that very medium.  Rather than accept and deal with the reality of the new world, schools react by setting stringent rules that don’t allow for flexibility.  Schools still retain the culture that they hold the information and students need to go to school to get it.  In reality, information is now everywhere and schools need to be places where students learn new and creative ways to use that information.

The trend is changing in our school systems, but the mentality of our system isn’t changing fast enough to effectively serve our students.  More rules are not the answer.  Schools must fully embrace emerging collaborative society in order to prepare students for the new world.