This blog post is brilliant. And it speaks volumes on the importance of teaching kids . . . not just skills but a love for learning as well as the need to feel like the belong and contribute.
How often do we fail our students? I don't mean with F's. I mean by either not engaging them (remember what that is? As one class put it recently, being engaged in an assignment or activity causes them to "feel like it isn't really school at all." How damn sad is that?) or by not allowing them to discover their passions.
Instead - and this is just me talking here - we're too damn busy cramming them through the basics (giving them skills they'll need to survive, really? Are we sure about that? Are we making sure every student does have the basics? And are we sure that those skills are really what they need to survive in the world?) that we forget to treat them how we (or our kids) would like to be treated and educated.
Might not schools be better if we helped students discover their passions sooner (instead of telling them to give up whatever they love because "they'll never get a job doing that") and then put them in situations where they could be engaged in learning through their passions (this is pretty much how I spent my undergrad and grad years at BSU) and then getting the hell out of their way?
That is no way a simple thing to do. But it seems to me that we have sure made a complex system (our current school system) that is quite efficient at doing a couple of simple thing: robbing kids of engagement and finding their passions.
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