I wanted to discuss how to improve Lincoln for our upcoming essay in College Comp. Part of that includes reading the Time essay, "How to Get our Schools out of the 20th Century." One issue at the core of this argument is the knowledge vs. skills debate. The article argues that our schools are outdated because they still function mostly as they did a century ago when they were designed to produce skills workers for an agrarian and industrial society. But that society has long since evaporated. Today, the article states, student need to be global learners who can compete in the new global economy. How do we do this? That tends to revolve around the debate of teaching students vital skills that can adapt and grow as they do, instead of teaching them 'outdated' knowledge delivered (usually) via rote memorization.
To bring in some outside ideas, I emailed several staff members to get some of their ideas. I simply asked my peers to respond to this statement: what skills or knowledge do you consider the most vital?
As you might expect, their responses were excellent.
To begin the class we reviewed the article and then I asked my class to answer the same question I had my colleagues answer. Then I handed markers to several students and asked them to write their responses on the board. The students then handed the markers to other students until everyone had a chance to put theirs on the board (or put a check mark by theirs if it was already up there).
Then I had students reads the teachers' responses. Then we compared them to our list and discussed them.
In all, it was a great class. As I grabbed my bag to head out for football practice, I snapped this shot because that moment in time is gone forever. I can try the same thing with another college comp class next semester, and it might bomb. You can't bottle a great lesson. So I took a picture for a reminder instead.
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