Gary Stager: My Hope For School

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Gary Stager: My Hope For School

Bio

Gary Stager, an internationally recognized educator and consultant, has spent twenty-six years helping teachers on six continents make sense of their roles in the age of personal computing and schools more constructive places for children. Gary is Executive Director of The Constructivist Consortium, a member of the One Laptop Per Child Learning Team, collaborator at MIT Media Lab Future of Learning Group, and co-founder & co-director of We Learn@Home providing educational services for home schoolers.

Transcript

I think in the past education has been based on this notion of scarcity that some people could succeed and others would have to fail, that there wouldn’t be enough seats for everyone, everyone can’t go to Harvard, or MIT. But now because of the existing technology everyone can go to Harvard or MIT. Everyone can have the range of experiences at a level of depth and sophistication that I described and the way we get there is by sort of checking our arrogance at the door and letting go of some of our assumptions. We don’t need to have schools that create winners and losers, we don’t have to grade and rank and sort and label kids the way we do. We can create environments where kids want to be and, in fact that’s the only future that’s viable for schools because there’s going to be all sorts of competing interests. Maybe school is the place with the great orchestras and the pottery kilns and the electron microscopes and the teachers who can inspire kids about the world, engage them in fabulous, rich, boisterous debates, and lead science experiments and conduct musical performances and players and dance recitals. And I think that if you think of school as a technology in and of itself, this sort of box with chairs and desks and people in it, then what we’re going to need to think about in the future is the best way to maximize the affordances of that technology and again it might be the place where we gain benefit from being together for a period of time. I don’t want my kids to come to school and be told open your book and read chapter 14 any more than I want them to be told open your laptop and read this web page. That’s a waste of time and resources, that they could have been reading that somewhere else on their own time or in some other context. The best hope that I have for school is that school becomes the place where we do the things that parents are proudest of that kids feel the most excited about and where they want to spend their time.

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8 Responses to “Gary Stager: My Hope For School”

  1. What’s Your Hope for School | EdTechTrek Says:

    [...] Stager talks about his hopes for school and schooling in the new documentary film, imagine it!² The Power of Imagination. On his blog, he describes it [...]

  2. Tweets that mention Imagine it! » Blog Archive » Gary Stager: My Hope For School -- Topsy.com Says:

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Chris Lehmann, Kristen Swanson. Kristen Swanson said: RT @chrislehmann: @garystager This is lovely — http://bit.ly/44jCMW [...]

  3. uberVU - social comments Says:

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by akamrt: RT @chrislehmann: @garystager This is lovely — http://bit.ly/44jCMW...

  4. Twitted by shareski Says:

    [...] This post was Twitted by shareski [...]

  5. Debbie S. Says:

    Then why do we need “school” at all? The whole world is a school. Why limit formal education to a box in my neighborhood when there is an entire planet from which to learn?

  6. Twitted by web20classroom Says:

    [...] This post was Twitted by web20classroom [...]

  7. more thoughts on education « Teaching and Learning Says:

    [...] “We don’t need to have schools that create winners and losers, we don’t have to grade and rank and sort and label kids the way we do. We can create environments where kids want to be and, in fact that’s the only future that’s viable for schools because there’s going to be all sorts of competing interests.” ~ Gary Stager http://www.imagineitproject.com/?p=2249 [...]

  8. Terese Abitong Says:

    I know precisely what you mean about concentration, it makes a WORLD of difference. Great suggestion.

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