Classroom Sucks

Thanks to Hugh a new voice for me on how the world works. A group of 4 evangelists for the Passionate Life.

Here is a long snip for Kathy's post on the Classroom
The problem with most corporate/adult learning programs is that they're just like school. And the problem with school is that it sucks. It works against the way the brain wants to learn......

The best learning occurs in a stimulating, active, challenging, interesting, engaging environment. It's how the brain works. The best learning occurs when you move at least some part of your body. The best learning occurs when you're actively involved in co-constructing knowledge in your own head, not passively reading or listening. (Taking notes doesn't really count as being actively involved.)

People complain that their kids can't pay attention in school, then their kid comes home and spends two hours studying the elaborate world of Halo 2. Reading, absorbing, problem solving, using sophisticated mental maps, and on it goes.
When learning is "presented" in a push model, your brain says, "This is SO not important." You're in for the battle of your life when you try to compete against the brain's natural instinct to scan for unusual, novel, possibly life-threatening or life-enhancing things.

Forcing people to sit in a chair and listen (or read) dry, formal words (with perhaps only a few token images thrown in) is the slowest, least effective, and most painful path to learning.......

Skyler (my switcher-daughter) was fortunate enough to go to a private school until 6th grade. In that school, there were no classrooms. There was no teacher-at-the-front rows of chairs thing. Kids sat where they wanted to do their work--on the floor, on the deck, at the kitchen table, whatever worked for them. There were no lectures, no formal lessons. When kids needed help on a "project", they asked, and one of the teachers helped them. If a few kids were dealing with the same thing, the teacher might take them into what looked like a little corporate conference room, for an ad-hoc session. Even then, the teacher was more like a mentor/guide, and not the "sage on the stage". Kids were allowed to work on whatever they wanted, as long as they were fulfilling, somehow, their goals to include geography, math, language, etc.

And each kid had his entire curriculum custom-made for his personal interests. For the things that turned his brain on. One kid was obsessed with dinosaurs, so with the help of his teacher, he designed his entire first year around dinosaurs. Everything he did was based on learning more about dinosaurs. Math was based on calculating sizes and dates, and making his own categorizations. Language was, well, he had to learn to read if he wanted to learn about his passion. Geography was based around researching the areas where different dinosaurs lived at different times, creating timelines, etc.

This site is a gold mine