In
Alvin Toffler's vision of the next generation of schools, there are a few features in his manifesto:
- Open twenty-four hours a day
- Customized educational experience
- Kids arrive at different times
- Students begin their formalized schooling at different ages
- Curriculum is integrated across disciplines
- Nonteachers work with teachers
- Teachers alternate working in schools and in business world
- Local businesses have offices in the schools
- Increased number of charter schools
It was interesting a couple of weeks ago talking with people from the world leader Boston Foundation who indicated that in Boston, the data clearly underscores charter schools outperforming public school models. Then this past week in Washington DC, I talked with a charter school expert who, like Toffler, rails against the massification of education, arguing that charter schools do not need to be the "one true model."
What seems to be true today is that learning how to learn in multi-disciplinary ways is one of the most important competencies in a connected and complex world. What percentage of any student's day should be dedicated to learning how to learn across disciplines? 10, 50, 80%? In the world we're preparing students for, there is all kind of math in art, all kinds of history in science. Online research, in the forms of passive web searches and collaborative twitter and blog searches, is a meta-competency within the domain of learning to learn. And to Toffler's list, this can happen in many of the approaches he suggests.
Is he right when he says that we need to replace current models rather than fix them?
