The Need to #ReThink Education Completely, Not Reform It
It am no longer a believer in education reform. Reform takes the existing system, with its existing paradigms, and tries to reshape it. At this point, education does not need merely reform, but a #ReThink. It needs the possibility of new paradigms1.
And, paradigm revolutions require doing things outside of the establishment. So, what I'm working on is not a change to public education in the U.S. (where I live), but the development of Education SystemONE, a new a Pre-K through Ph.D. education system that provides significantly higher value to the participants than current public systems, and also to ultimately be at a price point that it can be available to most of the world. Further, this education system will not only need to compete with traditional education, but it will need to fit in the entire cultural and informational space that we live in, and compete with things such as TV, YouTube, advertisements, misinformation, political rhetoric, etc.
This is a tall order. And to build something such as this, then each part of education needs to be rethought. This starts from the foundation of the aims of education, to the implicit beliefs commonly held, to the methods used. And all of this is iterative and self- focusing, in that the methods to determine these, must be congruent with the beliefs and values themselves.
So, I'm laying out the building blocks of this new system in a series of articles. Many of these are based on advice I have provided on LinkedIn's collaborative articles, others are not tied to these.
These articles are geared for common consumption, but I will do my best to cite my sources, and use rigorous thought. And, I will also likely edit the articles as time goes forward, because rethinking requires rethinking as new knowledge is gained.
I am linking the articles here to help organize them, and to make them easier to find. They are being arranged using the A to Z Framework for Formal Education, I developed, although I recognize that there is some arbitrariness to this, but that is the case for any categorization system. Also, lots of the letters are missing right now, because I'm still writing articles!
From Aim to Graduation
Aims of Education
Beliefs to Build On
Epistemological Beliefs
The following are articles addressing how Education SystemONE determines what should be believed, as that is foundational to any mostly coherent system
Bands of Belonging
Instead of traditional academic" subjects", which are far too disparate and disconnected, Education SystemONE first looks at the world as Bands of Belonging, which are concentric circles of systems surrounding each student.
Competencies
Education SystemONE takes the view that all learning is a tool to support their existence with their Bands of Belonging, and instead of strictly attempting to differentiate knowledge and skills, which neurologically are not as distinct as we make them out to be, we focus on the competencies each student develops, and have a Classification of Competencies with 10 categories.
Classification of Competencies:
Ⅰ. Character (Ethics) ??
Ⅱ. Conditioning (Habits/System I Thinking) ??
Ⅲ. Corporeality (Physical Skills) ??
Ⅳ. Recollection (Memory) ???
Ⅴ. Creativity ??
Ⅵ. Continual Improvement ??
Ⅶ. Critical Thinking (Reasoning) ??
Ⅷ. Communicating ??
Ⅸ. Calculating (Math) ??
Ⅹ. Constructs (Technology) ??
Developing Student Competencies
领英推荐
Evaluating Learning
Feedback to Learners
Graduating to the Next Level
Helping Students through the 5 Institutional Steps of Education
Inviting Potential Students
Joining the Educational Institution
Keeping Students
Leaving the Educational Institution
Measuring Student Success
Nine Facets of an Educational Institution
CaleNdaring and Scheduling
Organization and Operations
People
Quality Improvement
Regulations
Setting and Context
Technology
Understanding and Research
Venues and Vehicles
Wealth
3 Dimensions to View From
EXact to Abstract
Young to Old
Zoom In and Out
Footnotes and Works Cited