Notes

So What Should Kids Learn?

First, we need to teach children how to think, not what to remember.

Nobody needs to know how to find information or to remember anything. But they do need to learn how to find information more effectively – how to ask a good question. Then, they need to learn to evaluate what they find for importance, relevance, and bullshit.

We also need to teach:

Design- so you can come up with new approaches, see things from different perspectives, and ask really good questions.

Information theory– so they can understand data and statistics, how they are manipulated, how to interpret them, and how to make sense of the world.

Philosophy– logic, ethics, rhetoric, how we know things, and especially, how to ask why, and never stop asking.

Storytelling – what makes a good story, what makes it effective or persuasive, how to write about events and people, how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and see things from someone else’s perspective.

How to Disagree- how to not get your way and get over it, how to negotiate for what you want, how to compromise, how to speak up and be heard, when to give up, when to fight for what you believe in.

How to Make Stuff Up– if you don’t know what to do next, make it up. If you are imagining something cool, make it. Believe in your imagination. We are so far beyond the time when inventions had to be a thing. With computers we can create almost anything we can imagine, and a bunch of stuff we haven’t thought of yet.

Sure, this sounds Diffendoofer. But children’s authors get things right most of time because they don’t care about standardized tests.

What we don’t need to do is teach kids skills based on specific jobs. Most of the jobs our kids will do haven’t been invented yet, or won’t look anything like they do today. So we really don’t know what they’ll be doing or how they’ll be doing it.

Instead, we need to teach them how to see problems clearly, ask really good questions, think with creativity and imagination, communicate through words, pictures, sound, and motion, and have courage to try new things.

And today, the best way to do that is to make them play video games. Sorry guys, no worksheets until you finish Bioshock Infinite.