[Its.an.education.project] Questions for education projects. The life cycle of a great education.

[Alan Kay]

Good exchange here!

Cheers,

Alan


----- Original Message ----
From: Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com>
To: Bill Kerr <billkerr at gmail.com>
Cc: its.an.education.project at tema.lo-res.org
Sent: Tuesday, May 6, 2008 7:49:29 AM
Subject: Re: [Its.an.education.project] Questions for education projects. The life cycle of a great education.

On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 11:41 PM, Bill Kerr <billkerr at gmail.com> wrote:


I think there also needs to be something in there about different learners being different or that learning styles that work for one learner may not work for another. Perhaps those who learn readily without formal instruction are just one subset of all learners. For those people school may well feel like a prison or a sophisticated form of child abuse. Other learners may need far more structure than is fashionable to admit in constructionist study groups. There actually appears to be evidence for this.


Interesting point.  I do worry about mindful observation being biased by the unconscious need to be fashionable -- something that affects all sorts of experiments, scientific or not.
 
However, Wheldall is concerned that low-progress readers do not
learn to read naturally. "They will only learn to read with careful,
systematic instruction to which phonics instruction is central," he
says. 
If I am casting the net too wide with these questions then they still might serve a useful purpose of how the net should be cast, what should be in and out and why.


Agreed -- "How wide should the net be cast in this discussion?" is another good one.
 

Much of this is a war zone but OLPC was prepared to fight some sort of war from the start. Which war(s) are we prepared to fight and which ones not?


Another good one.  A related question : when is it acceptable to dismiss commonly-held beliefs as obviously wrong (is it ever acceptable?) and when should they be addressed in detail?
 
And you and Javier both note:


Is Education different
in under developed (and conflicted) countries?
Highlighting some major differences -- as perceived internally, and as perceived by visiting educators from elsewhere -- will be useful.

Negative results are also very interesting : what are major educational initiatives (in a given region/country) that have been tried without success?  What are narrow areas in which they dramatically succeeded or failed?

SJ



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