TED Conversations

TED Book Chat

This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »

Live Chat today at 4pm Eastern: "Why School? How Education Must Change When Information and Learning Are Everywhere"

Author Will Richardson will be joining us for a live Q&A today at 4pm Eastern!

Continuing with our series of TED book chats, for the next week and a half we'll be discussing Will Richardson's new TED eBook, "Why School?"

Traditional educators, classrooms, and brick-and-mortar schools are no longer necessary to access information. Instead, things like blogs and wikis, as well as remote collaborations and an emphasis on 'critical thinking' skills are the coins of the realm in this new kingdom. Yet the national dialogue on education reform focuses on using technology to update the traditional education model, failing to reassess the fundamental model on which it is built.

In TED's new eBook, "Why School?", educator, author, parent and blogger Will Richardson challenges traditional thinking about education—questioning whether it still holds value in its current form.

The book is available for Kindle, Nook, and iOS devices (which have a great new custom TED Books app):

Kindle copy: http://www.amazon.com/Why-School-Information-Everywhere-ebook/dp/B00998J5YQ
iOS app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ted-books/id511071050?mt=8

You can also read more on Will's blog: http://willrichardson.com

So, let's get things started... when information is everywhere, what is the purpose of traditional schools?

Topics: education
0
Share:
progress indicator
  • thumb
    Oct 8 2012: Thanks, Everyone!
  • thumb
    Oct 8 2012: I'm afraid this fascinating conversation is coming to an end. Will, thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts with us! I look forward to reading through the related books you mentioned near the end of "Why School", and I'll be continuing to follow your excellent blog. Such an important and interesting topic!

    To our participants, thank you as always for sharing your excellent questions. We hope to see you again soon for the next TED book chat!
  • Oct 8 2012: Hi Will,
    Regarding assessment. I understand we are completely rethinking education, here. And with good reason. Even John Seely Brown, in his long tail and learning as enculturation ideas, talks about a virtuous cycle between niche interest development and coming back to the "fat part" of the tail to learn that core knowledge and then students returning to their niche interests to apply it. He says a core curriculum based around critical thinking (and I would add literacy and numeracy to a point). Could Performance Assessments (I know they present many challenges for reliability, etc.) that are open ended and authentic provide some common ground between competing views on approaches to education?
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: Yes. But again, the devil is in the details. how much of that "fat part" are we going to require and how are we going to assess it. That's the biggest question we're facing right now. Does EVERY child need EVERY thing in the curriculum? What, really, do ALL children need?
  • thumb
    Oct 8 2012: I am against any strong normative statements about how schools and education should change. I think better way is to spot changes and trends already taking place and just direct it.
    Carl Jung complained about over-protectiveness of the European educational system (in a way that repressed talented students and favoured average) whereas he liked American approach that, in his opinon, focused on assisting inquisitive minds.
    With this indredible access to information, I think teachers will become imporant mentors on how to filter information and how to think analytically. Learning process will take place outside the classrooms as well and will be self-paced and individual according to the interests and abilities of children (students) - we can see that in the case of Khan Academy.
    One of my many questions regarding this topic is: What would Carl Jung of the future be like?
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: I'm not sure Carl Jung would be happy with the current system that tests kids ad nauseum for most of their schooling years. But I agree with you that teachers will be even more important now to help students assit their inquisitive minds.
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: Love the question. Carl Jung emphasized that our most important field of inquiry was psychology, correct? And despite his work and many other psychologists since him, we are seeing extremely high rates of addiction, personality disorders, and other mental health issues. So it would seem the Carl Jung of the future would be just like the one of the past, perhaps using slightly different language. He would emphasize relationships between healthy mentors and children, with time to be outside, grow food, and reflect.
  • Oct 8 2012: Today we face the complexity of social and economic opportunity presented by the globalization and internationalization which had huge impact on the higher education. Probably we will see more and more incompatibility in the whole education system. The reform is inevitable and irresistible.
  • thumb
    Oct 8 2012: I am in the (apparently very rare) position of feeling that most of what I learned in school was, in fact, essential. It was a lot of information, but my understanding of the world today wouldn't be possible without that depth and breadth.

    I'm aware that my education was both excellent and fairly progressive, but it certainly fell squarely within traditional definitions of schooling -- what is your response to an honest opinion that that system worked for me?
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: I'd say Great! But "worked" is relative. I had great teachers, great friends, and school "worked" for me, too. But it could have worked a lot better had I not had to study a whole bunch of stuff that was all in the service of the test and the curriculum. I've forgotten, as have most, about 80% of what I learned in high school especially because it had no real relevance to my life. What I could have done with that time... And now as a parent, I want my kids to develop as learners more than anything else.
  • Oct 8 2012: Will, taken to its logical conclusion, it makes me think that credentials at colleges and universities suffer from the same problems as you describe in schools. Many specialized programs can potentially also suffer from the skills-knowledge race Do you see that as well? Maybe, great teaching is great teaching in any environment, and post-secondary instructors also need to better model the way they network and collaborate in their field.
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: The whole credentialing thing is getting interesting. Badges...MOOCs...etc. It's all going to change in the next 5-10 years in some pretty innovative ways, I think.
  • Oct 8 2012: My 2 cents to this very interesting discussion: see my TED talk from TEDxAmsterdamED (Education) of two weeks ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEDM3zzYN_I

    I talk about moving away from a (societal) system which is only based on achieving status, towards a new system which is built upon creating value. It's a very personal talk and was very well received. I hope you like it too!
    • Oct 8 2012: Claire, I look forward to checking it out. Every aspect of this discussion has helped me question the parts of the teaching practice we take for granted. Thanks.
  • Oct 8 2012: Giving students access to experts in various fields is a key factor to making constructivist, inquiry-based approaches successful. In reality, linking students with the outside world seems is not a possibility, unless the teacher is present and monitoring every interaction. I see the networking element of students with experts and the community at large as taking time. I am thinking grades 7-9 and realize that this might be less of a concern in high school. Do you know of any strategies of creating "walled gardens" for young teen aged children to start availing of those opportunities and assuring their parents and teachers that they are safe?
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: Sure. Edmodo is one example. But I might be a bit more sanguine about the idea that we can teach even young kids to use and make good decisions about how to use online spaces for learning. We have a HUGE role to play in that.
      • Oct 8 2012: Great. Just set that up a couple of days ago for my classes. Good to know we may be on the right track! I know of examples of younger kids making their way on the net as well. I guess inviting experts to work with students online through Edmodo will be a possibility (and I will include that in the parent letter and forms).
    • Oct 8 2012: I'm confused. I thought the point of "constructivist, inquiry-based approaches" was that you don't need experts. Yes, you need experts (in both the subject and pedagogy) to design the activities and tools, but they don't need to be in the classroom. On the contrary, the students (with gentle prodding) become their own experts because they relate to the content without intermediaries. This works best in STEM fields, which have clearer right and wrong answers, but logical reasons why an answer is one or the other and ways to transform (debug) the wrong into the right.
      • Oct 8 2012: Max, I think some of the best potential for collaborative learning is when there is no clear right and wrong answer. Hope that helps.
  • Oct 8 2012: Will, do you see the end result of the Why School ideal looking a lot like the home education movement?
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: No. I think schools, at least in the short term, still have a great deal of importance in communities and for families. In this time of two income earning families, the idea that even a majority of kids could homeschool seems doubtful to me. That's not to say that there won't be a lot of different constructs to what classrooms look like, however.
  • Oct 8 2012: "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed," said William Gibson in 2003. I'd like to argue that the opposite is true - we now have excellent methods of distribution, but the content itself is lacking. The first part is pretty self-evident; the internet connects people as never before.

    But do we have the best content? Hardly. Instead, in the last decade we've ridden the wave of Moore's law to excellent technology, but our understanding of human nature has been left behind. We now have the technology to do what Seymour Papert wanted to do in the late 70s, when he wrote Mindstorms, but we're not doing it. Instead, the ed-tech "innovators" focus on repackaging old pedagogy, primarily lecture. The students' chance to explore the subject matter is defeated by trying to get the right answers. What Papert suggests in his book is that right answers don't matter nearly as much as the process used to obtain them. Humans do not think they way computers operate, so why do we treat online education like a file transfer?
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: Thanks for the comment, Max. I'm actually just re-reading Mindstorms. ;0)

      I think we have amazing content stored on the Internet, but the job now becomes ours to find it, vet it, and learn from it. We can't be waiting for someone else, schools included, to be delivering it to us. Totally agree as to the dysfunction of the current system's attempt to teach and measure only a small slice of what can be learned.
      • Oct 8 2012: One of the key benefits of traditional education institutions is that they curate and organize content. By separating wheat from chaff and putting topics in sequence, they provide a much higher quality product. It's certainly true that some of the decisions they make need to be revised, but I think that there will always need to be someone doing the job. You can't just hand a kid an internet connection and say "learn something". Even once they can determine what's incorrect, outdated, biased, irrelevant, and so on, there's no way to know what to read or do with what's left.

        This is especially problematic when there's always the possibility of another great find if you look just a little bit more, which leads to skimming many pages rather than deep reading a few. Another benefit of the traditional university: once you've paid tuition and moved to campus, you're going to focus on what they give you.
  • thumb
    Oct 8 2012: Will, do you think there's enough depth and organization for the knowledge currently available online to essentially "replace" classroom curricula? Could a high school student really get as far in physics with Khan Academy/etc as they would with a year of traditional education and materials? Do you see that level of freely available knowledge as inevitable?
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: I do think there is enough depth of information...it's our job now to make sense of it and organize it whether as individuals or networks. And I do think that if the end goal is to pass a test of discrete skills, then online resources will soon (if they can't already) make that happen. Taking physics for the sake of checking the physics box is much different from taking it because you have a need or a passion to learn it, however.
  • Oct 8 2012: I am sitting with my class waiting for the buses to arrive to take them home. I work in the largest district in Missouri by square mile. It also happens to be one of the poorest as well. School for my students means something different than school for many others. It is a clean, healthy place where they can get food to eat and people that care about them. I worry about how the idea of schools may change where school itself is no longer a physical space, but an online learning environment. This would be devastating for my community. What are your thoughts, will we see this happen?
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: That's the point of the book, that we need to change schools but not do away with the powerful learning that happens in physical space, face 2 face classrooms. I'm not convinced it can be replicated online, especially for young kids. Learning online is a huge part of what we want kids to do, but it still needs a foundation that local spaces can only nourish.
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: Vital perspective! Thank you for adding it to the conversation. I see one of the lasting values of schools as community hubs that provide healthy relationships with kids--that includes taking care of shelter and food.
  • Oct 8 2012: Will,
    If you were building a new high school or middle school today what aspects of construction or design would you consider to support your vision and idea of what school should today and the next 25 years? From the learners perspective what would that building look like? I'm referring to school as a noun instead of a verb in this case.

    Ryan
  • thumb
    Oct 8 2012: Agreed with you on that. But how does these changes can be done while at the same time, teachers are still with their "traditional minds" and still cannot adept to these modern changes?
  • Oct 8 2012: Hello there :)

    My name's Saulo and I'm from Brazil. I'm currently 17 years old and I'm quite fed up with this archaic and outdated system we have at present. It's not endemic in Brazil, though. It happens in every corner around the globe. People wrongly assess diplomas alongside with formal education being more important than the practical application of that matter per se. They just care about whether you have a diploma or not.
    I'm on my penultimate year of high school and it's being really tough to keep up with this. They oblige us to load our brains with lots of information we're most likely not to ever use! Scarcely have we time to even think about what we're learning, as we are expected just to do well on a standardised test that pretends to value how intelligent or likely to succeed we are. That's totally wrong! I learn a lot of things from books, people, the internet... Furthermore, school doesn't teach us the necessary tools we need to learn, it only teaches us how to perform well in a test. It doesn't set us for life. I strongly feel that I've wasted many years of my life stuck in a classroom :(

    In a nutshell, I'd like to know whether it's really necessary to go through all of this (finish high school, go to college and follow a well-worn path that has been previously set for us to take).
    The thing is, I aim to become a successful entrepreneur, I fancy learning by any means, but I'd far rather if it were in a more intimate and informal way.

    Thank you for your attention, greetings from Brazil :)
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: Hey Saulo...thanks for chiming in. Looking forward to my visit to Brazil in January!

      Certainly, many have become successful via dropping out and following their passions. It's still a more difficult path, however, but I do think it's opening up more and more. There is a huge groundswell of creativity and innovation here in the states, and I think as schools do more to nurture that, the learning experience will get better and better. Whatever you do, don't lose your passion to succeed!
    • Oct 8 2012: Well spoken young man for 17 (compared to most US teens), and good questions.
    • Oct 8 2012: Perhaps you should apply for the Peter Thiel Fellowship.

      http://www.thielfellowship.org/

      And I see many young people are using college campus with all its infrastructure labs, equipment, people etc. to incubate their Startups. Good luck!
  • Oct 8 2012: Information and learning may be everywhere, but not access to information and learning. How can we create more access to online learning, and real life learning within communities; learning networks?
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: It's a great question, and I wonder why this isn't more of a topic during this election season. Broadband is growing, but it's not where it needs to be. Mobile devices connect us, but they are not the best for creating and sharing complex artificats of our learning.
      • Oct 8 2012: It seems as though we are unwilling to invest in our infrastructure. This would add thousands of immediate jobs while laying the foundation to our future.
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: Digital equality is an important topic that we aren't talking about enough yet.
  • Oct 8 2012: Or maybe I should have asked what SHOULD either society or govt do to compensate/remediate those children whose education over last 20 yrs was a complete waste of time/failure (thereby impacting their future job opps and earning capacity.
  • Oct 8 2012: Will, can you give an idea of how your vision of "school" would work for students with moderate to intensive special needs? As a teacher of students with special needs, I try to incorporate PBL and inquiry based lessons as much as possible, but struggle...
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: Depending on the needs, it can be difficult, I know. But allowing all kids to pursue learning in the context of what they have an interest in or a passion for is the starting point for all of this. Certainly, we need to provide access and the full range of opportunities that technology brings to kids who have obstacles to overcome. But I really think we can make much of that more engaging to kids at every level if we nurture their passion for learning rather than extinguish it with the current, content heavy curriculum.
  • thumb
    Oct 8 2012: And, when it comes to basing tests on "googleable" facts like your Gupta Empire example... students have been complaining (rightly so, IMO) about this for at least the decades since I was in school. :) What do you think is the main reason schools continue to stick to this style of education? Is it just that it's so much more cost-effective than measuring actual knowledge and skill?
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: It's because that content mastery stuff is easy to measure, plain and simple. How can you easily measure perseverance, creativity, ability to find and solve problems, etc? While those things are more important than wide content mastery now, they are much harder to measure.
      • thumb
        Oct 8 2012: Those things are best measured through relationships between teachers and students. Unfortunately, we are not in an age of trusting such information.
        • thumb
          Oct 8 2012: Yeah, you would think we'd trust teachers to tell us what's happening in terms of learning and our kids. Funny thing is, the best predictor of future success is not SAT or test scores; it's GPA. Shocking! ;0)
      • thumb
        Oct 8 2012: Do you think the era of sending kids to a classroom to all learn the same information simultaneously is coming to an end? I'm trying to picture what wide-scale free-form learning might look like, and all I can come up with is something like homeschooling... or "unschooling"!
        • Oct 8 2012: It must come to and end!
          We're all different! How come they think we should learn pretty much the same stuff and be expected to reach a specific score on a standardised test?
          I'm on my penultimate year of high school here in Brazil and I'm quite fed up with it by now. I study at a private school, as most public schools here suck.
      • Oct 8 2012: So I wonder what's the answer? We're going to run up against a strongly held assumption around measurement that makes up the modern (Western at least) world view. Do we continue to communicate with our communities about increasing local involvement in schools? Do we get into epistemology and discuss the limitations of reductionism, etc.? or do we just try to demonstrate the promise of local teacher judgements and build trust that way?
  • Oct 8 2012: Hi. I have a question. Can I buy those ted titles? If so for how much??

    Thanks (please reply)
  • Oct 8 2012: Do you see any value in teaching mindfulness and social and emotional learning in public schools? I am an eighth grade teacher in a public school. I currently have a master's degree in contemplative education and try to incorporate these skills into my classroom
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: Absolutely. Read Howard Rheingold's "Net Smart" for a great discussion of mindfulness in learning these days.
      • Oct 8 2012: Thank you! I am also currently working on a curriculum to teach mindfulness to teachers through classes at a community college. I am trying to spread the word that it is up to the teachers. Parker Palmer has a great line for this: "Who is the teacher that teachers?" A teacher's inner life is projected back onto the students every day in the classroom.
  • Oct 8 2012: We recently had a discussion about this in our faculty meeting. Most of the teachers were very vocal about how changes need to be made. The problem is getting started. Also, the handful that didn't participate in the discussion are the ones who don't want it to change because they are afraid or really don't want to learn how to teach in a new way (especially when they are close to retirement).
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: I'd be interested to hear what changes they were advocating...more student ownership over learning in the context of connected technologies?
    • Oct 8 2012: Linda, yes, I can understand your frustration. The approach in our board has been to invite teachers to work togther - maybe in learning partnerships with another teacher, where thy can support and challenge each other. Doing nothing is not an option. The teaching profession demands that teachers continue developing professionally - at least that is the consensus we are coming to in our jurisdiction - Ontario. Hope that helps
    • Oct 8 2012: The key is to invite them to tweak their lessons, small changes, which can have positive effects. It is difficult to ask teachers to make huge changes all at once. Moving toward the vision of Why School can happen gradually, based on the vignettes Will included in the book
    • Oct 8 2012: Linda, there will always be those close to retirement who are afraid to change, even resistant to change. There are also younger teachers who were very successful in school "the way it was" and are afraid to change. I think we tend to let the naysayers dominate the conversation with their silence. Let them join when they are comfortable but do what you can to support those ready to try now. Nothing wrong with pilot projects until the others catch the vision.
  • Oct 8 2012: Will,

    I am a vice principal in a secondary school in Ottawa, Canada. I just read your book over the past couple of days. It really hit home, because our board has invested heavily in the instructional coaching model. At the secondary level, this has involved a coach working with groups of 4 to 6 teachers in a school - typically full days, every other week. The work involves co-planning a task, observing one teacher deliver it in their class, and debriefing around student artifacts. The task usually involves a critical thinking strategy.

    I mention all this because I think this approach will get at a meaningful classroom practice, which can bridge us to the new paradigm envisioned in Why School.
  • thumb
    Oct 8 2012: Hi Will. How would you suggest to make a reform for education - changing it from the traditional one to the modern one in less developing countries?
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: It's a great question, Muhammad, because access is at the heart of the learning explosion. But that doesn't mean that we can't move toward a more constructivist, inquiry based experience in schools nonetheless. The emphasis can't be on content as much as it is how to live and learn in a growingly connected world. As much as teachers can model this, the better.
      • Oct 8 2012: Will, this is a great point. I have just started undertaking a social media presence in the past couple of months. As an administrator, I figure that if I am going to police my students for cyber-bullying, etc, I need to be more familiar with the social media environment. It has come in handy a couple of times so far.

        What I missed was your point in the book about how teachers need to model how they use on-line collaboration in their professional lives, so that students can learn how to do it effectively. Good point. I am already seeing many benefits of doing so, in the easy access to the thoughts of many professionals, who are grappling with the same challenges I am.
  • Oct 8 2012: People in America are receiving less schooling than people in Korea. By the time an American student reaches high school graduation, people in Korea have had a total of two years more in education. I think that is crazy. What about you?
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: I think it depends on how you define an "education." My kids can engage in a whole host of informal educational and learning experiences that aren't counted in the traditional system. And I'm not convinced that more stuff, more content, more knowledge is better than spending more time on making and sharing and problem solving and learning about the world.
  • thumb
    Oct 8 2012: Will, as I read through the WSJ description of the "one-room schoolhouse" of the future that you cited in the book, I was nodding along, thinking it made good sense, and that it's likely the direction we're headed for. But you think this is misguided... could you talk more about what you'd prefer to see in the future classroom? Would it be a similar setup, but without a traditional "curriculum", or would it look entirely different?
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: I'm not convinced that sitting kids down in front of computers to work through a canned curriculum will do anything to help them become better learners. It might make them better test takers, but to me, that's the exact opposite of what I want classrooms to be. We need kids with adults who are getting them to go deeply into the things that interest them and develop lifelong skills and dispositions for learning in the process. That WSJ description is far from that, I think.
  • Oct 8 2012: For those children whose education and future employment opportunities and lifetime earning capacity has been handicapped by having spent the last 14 yrs in a frankly inadequate educational system that turned out to be a waste of time (and for some, money too), what will society or government do for these kids to either compensate them for the loss, or remediate the situation?
  • thumb
    Oct 8 2012: Will, what are examples of schools or organizations that support learning that are working in your opinion?
    • thumb
      Oct 8 2012: I think there are a few schools and thousands of individual classrooms that have started preparing kids for a world of abundance. Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia is probably the most oft cited school that embeds technology into an inquiry/project based learning environment that really helps kids develop the skills and dispositions they need to succeed right now.