Some educators are attempting to transform the world of education to meet the needs of the 21st Century Student.

At a recent retreat organized by The Charter School Growth Fund, Anastasia Goodstein - author of Totally Wired and Ypulse - noted these emerging trends in Reboot Learning!:

  • The educational experience should be more individualized and customized for the student… but …there has to be some structured goals/desired outcomes.
  • The role of teachers will and must change.  As knowledge becomes more broadly available through technology, teachers are no longer the all-knowing beings they once were — they instead become more like “guides” or “facilitators” of learning.
  • It’s about preparing them to be adaptive vs. having one job or career for the rest of their lives. We talked about the new skills needed for the 21st century like filtering/information literacy, project management, personal branding, thinking globally and the ability to adapt to rapid change. It has to be about more than just mastering subject matter or even learning one specific vocation.
    As I read about these emerging trends, I realized that these worthy ideas permeate the thinking behind such disparate groups as Girl Scouts USA and Unschooling groups … and maybe, they aren’t really all that new. 
    Girl Scouts USA counsels adult volunteers to ensure that programs are girl-led so that each girl can develop the “courage, confidence, and character” to be a leader.  There is a whole new initiative to create resources and pathways to ensure that Girl Scouts is a girl-driven experience.
    And yet, when you talk to adult volunteers who have been in scouting all of their long lives, you’ll hear that this is not a new idea.  What is new are guidelines and materials enabling current leaders to learn to let go as the girls mature.
    Successful Girl Scout leaders have been doing this all along.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table, while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of coloured paper, or plant straw trees in bead flower-pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of, before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experience.

I’m reminded of an even older education idea.  If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day.  If you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.

I think that the best teachers have always known that their goal is to enable independent learners who are are confident, creative problem solvers.

What do you think? Share your opinion in a comment!

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