While the bureaucrats continue to ban books, undermine progressive education, and attempt to influence a generation on the necessity of backward thinking, the business world continues to think of new ways to get people into jobs more quickly by cutting out the traditional paths to careers.
We’re only going to see more and more of this type of shift to training usable skills that allow more flexibility for young people, or those who want to start anew.
Meanwhile, public education will continue to slug it out with pompous gasbags who don’t want anything to change yet continue to blame public education for all evils.
I was a computer science major back in the early part of this new millennia in another life. Somehow, I managed to leverage that into getting a job writing computer science standards for the state of Kentucky.
I still don’t know how that happened. Weird.
Anyway, the first coding language I learned was Java. It’s a beast with a very steep learning curve that intimidates most people. And it’s a horrible language to tackle when you’re first starting out.
Service-learning isn’t just for after school clubs
I love service projects organized by students. Clothing drives, food drives, clean-up days, and many others are great ways to engage students in their communities.
But we shouldn’t just leave service projects to after-school clubs.
What if we made them part of the learning process in core content classes?
Tom Holman, board chair of the Search Institute, told me that their research shows one of the three most positive indicators (predictors) of future success among young people is their belief that “what they do makes a difference” (searchinstitute.org). He also recommends the Multiplying Good organization, which can be found at minnesota.multiplyinggood.org.
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Cory Doctorow’s work at Pluralistic inspired the layout, focus, and work displayed here. Hat tip to Cory for all his fine work.