Uncategorized 01 Apr 2007 03:30 pm
- Quote: “When I hear people say it’s our job to create the twentyfirst- century workforce, it scares the hell out of me,” says Chris Lehmann, SLA’s founding principal. “Our job is to create twenty-first-century citizens. We need workers, yes, but we also need scholars, activists, parents — compassionate, engaged people. We’re not reinventing schools to create a new version of a trade school. We’re reinventing schools to help kids be adaptable in a world that is changing at a blinding rate.” –Chris Lehmann
Note: Really nice article in Edutopia on Chris’s work at the Science Leadership Academy.
- post by willrich
4 Comments
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Hear Hear! I think we need to re-think schools but I do not want to see us grinding people into cogs in the machine.
But if we don’t educate them enough to become “workers” in this 21st century world then what do they do? Can we afford to graduate a generation of consumers and not producers? “Workers” means more than “Put part in machine/ pull lever” workers, and I would sumbit that everyone from Scholars to Engineers to Factory Linemen are “workers” in their own ways.
What scares me is the number students who plan to graduate and then do “whatever” without any idea whatsoever of what “whatever” may entail. Living in your parents’ basement indefinetly is not life plan….
I find Lehman’s comment puzzling. Who would actually say they want to ‘create the workforce for the 21st century’? Who would be that obtuse? Surely only a politician in the context of economic development would even use that type of language.
For some reason there is a widespread belief that our democracy and education are turning us into slaves, or ‘cogs in the machine’ as someone above says. If anything, technology, and the internet in particularly are bringing about unprecedented levels of freedom, choice, information.
this is awesome. teachers are so far behind the changing technology that they are also holding the kids back. keeping up with the new stuff allows kids to be better prepared for future learning, and hey it also lets the old ppl learn cool stuff. ha