Oppi

Will Richardson got me thinking.  Again.  How much of what we do in education is based on focusing on the needs of kids?  In a recent iteration of Will's Educating Modern Learners, he shared a couple articles related to thinking about the future of work.  Reality check - whatever we're doing in education, our kids' futures will involve employment - everyone's gotta make a livin'.  If, as educators, we're about preparing our students for the future, then we're ultimately, at least in part, preparing them to be competitive in the employment arena.  Competitive - because nobody ever interviewed for a job when they were the only candidate.  (Well, except for uncle Guido's nephew for that job at the concrete factory).  to be competitive, students need to be fully enabled learners.  And the "other part", our students' personal lives outside of work, that place where hobbies and interests and passions reside for purely personal reasons?  That involves learning as well.


We can't predict what each of our students will do in their adult life.  We can't know all of their passions, interests, and future opportunities.  Because of that, paraphrasing Seymour Papert, we might quibble over the billionth of all the information in the world that we feel is essential for our kids to know from school, or ultimately compile a list of all the questions we want to believe they might need to be able to recite a correct answer.  But we will most certainly miss things that many of them will need in their futures.  We can, however, anticipate that they will have to learn new skills, new concepts, and new ways of doing things in whatever they do.  And the better we prepare them to be learners, to be able to assimilate information and develop knowledge in unfamiliar situations, the better we help them develop into experts at becoming experts, then the better off our students will be.