I've been astonished at how much my 4 year old son is learning from his Amazon tablet, and YouTube Kids. We never had these things as kids, and at least I was not crushing the three Rs at his age. Makes me wonder if the future is self-serve education, especially for those who can't afford regular school.
I'm glad he's picking up so much! I keep thinking about the differences between learning, memorizing, and training. I wonder if education is leaning too hard on the successes of Duolingo and Khan Academy at establishing skills--but then failing to transfer those skills to application. For example, my kiddos come home with a slew of factoids (did you know pizza was invented in Greece? a peccary is a medium-sized hoofed pig-like animal common in Central and South America. Etc.) But these Trivial Pursuit winners are not put into any sort of larger context. The transition in Common Core to less fiction, more informational texts seems to mean schools measure success by being able to extract key points rather than synthesize a nuanced understanding from various points. They try--"higher-order thinking" is a popular buzzword--but I worry that we're moving back to the "memorize and summarize" model. I feel that kids and all people retain more when it's "I did a thing" than when it's "I got a good score" due to memorizing or even due to picking up a technique. School is still pretty crazy and I can see the appeal of self-serve. That crushing blow is lurking, though--any moment, it could come down and bash in the skull of the joy of discovery.
I've been astonished at how much my 4 year old son is learning from his Amazon tablet, and YouTube Kids. We never had these things as kids, and at least I was not crushing the three Rs at his age. Makes me wonder if the future is self-serve education, especially for those who can't afford regular school.
I'm glad he's picking up so much! I keep thinking about the differences between learning, memorizing, and training. I wonder if education is leaning too hard on the successes of Duolingo and Khan Academy at establishing skills--but then failing to transfer those skills to application. For example, my kiddos come home with a slew of factoids (did you know pizza was invented in Greece? a peccary is a medium-sized hoofed pig-like animal common in Central and South America. Etc.) But these Trivial Pursuit winners are not put into any sort of larger context. The transition in Common Core to less fiction, more informational texts seems to mean schools measure success by being able to extract key points rather than synthesize a nuanced understanding from various points. They try--"higher-order thinking" is a popular buzzword--but I worry that we're moving back to the "memorize and summarize" model. I feel that kids and all people retain more when it's "I did a thing" than when it's "I got a good score" due to memorizing or even due to picking up a technique. School is still pretty crazy and I can see the appeal of self-serve. That crushing blow is lurking, though--any moment, it could come down and bash in the skull of the joy of discovery.