Resource and a Challenge: "What's worth knowing?"

12/28/2017

By John Clements

Happy Holidays, everyone! I hope that the holiday break has not only given you time with family and friends but also a chance to reflect on your learning from the previous year and the chance to get rejuvenated for the year ahead!

In today’s post, I’m sharing a passage and a challenge to put you in the "reimagination mindset" as we get ready for 2018. Check out the passage below from Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner. Take the challenge by posting your “what’s worth knowing” question in the padlet below.

Interested in learning more about the book? (I thought so!) The cover of the book boasts that it’s a “no-holds-barred assault on outdated teaching methods”. I won’t argue that it’s incendiary but I think “assault” goes too far. This book is a call to action, asking us to challenge past practices not to tear down our schools.

You can find out more here.

1 Comment

David Antonelli

12/28/2017 09:43:50 pm

Seeing that we try to get families to be a part of their child’s education, I would first start out by asking the student and the guardians what are the things that they see as being things they need to first learn at home. What my parents taught me around my house growing up are the first things I have tried to share with my kids over the past 10-14 years. They need to be able to understand the difference between book smart and common sense. (I would hope that they would want us to ask questions about the importance of organization, daily living skills like cleaning, cooking, laundry, sewing, following a schedule, filling out forms, banking, reading labels on bottles/medicines, living on their own, getting a car and taking care of it, safety, grocery shopping,...)

I would have different local businesses work with us to find out what skills were needed in order to be successful at those particular job sites. What kinds of things socially do they want to see that are not necessarily taught from books.
I would use what is around us as far as the local and national news as a way to get them interested in what was going on around us and as a way to get everyone involved in different causes based on what they were into.
I would ask them questions about what they were passionate about, have them look at things going on around us that they questioned, that they wanted to be a part of, things they felt they could help to make better or a cause they wanted to join.

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