The Future of Smart

Jan 14

Written By Socrates - Head of School Team

Think you might want to read this book?

Have you ever wondered why we offer a similar education to nearly every child around the world? Have you thought about why we use grades and standardized tests to measure learning when real world learning looks nothing like that? Hansen uses The Future of Smart to explain the educational landscape in terms of where we’ve come from, where we are, and where we should go.

What Would Socrates Ask?

What assumptions do we have about education that are misaligned with organic learning?
What should the new metrics of learning look like?
Are there some aspects of learning that should be measured by letters and numbers?
What if we asked all students “What do you want to learn now?” periodically?

Research

“Although No Child Left Behind and other reforms helped raise awareness about certain inequities in the education system, the overall outcome was a massive disappointment. Average reading scores for American students in grades four and eight remained relatively flat for 10 years after the passage of NCLB.”
“Most of us cannot even imagine the world our children will graduate into. Many of the jobs that they will apply for don’t yet exist. Most of us didn’t know what an app was 20 years ago, let alone that in 2019 there would be over 1.7 million jobs available in imagining, funding, building, selling and improving them.”
“In general (Holistic-Indigenous Learning schools) tend to be small, with fewer than 200 students, due to the central focus on development and the sense, borne out by research, that deep relationships are difficult to sustain when the student body exceeds 180-200 people.”
“... HIL programs that serve some of the most underprivileged, diverse student populations in the country have a much higher rate of graduating students who eventually enroll in and complete post-secondary programs than do comparable non-HIL programs.”

Concepts

Liberatory- social change through education that is based on consciousness-raising and engagement with oppressive forces.
It is our desire to fulfill the need of our left hemisphere of the brain that has led us down the path of numbers/letters for grades and an emphasis on standardized test scores.
Holistic-Indigenous Learning (HIL)- reflects the self-similar dynamics of natural systems, with each level reinforcing wholeness, connectedness and embodiment.
There are only three sensitive periods of development:
- Early childhood: language acquisition
- Late childhood - early adolescence: shift to peer relationships/community
- Middle adolescence: independent sense of identity

Components of Holistic-Indigenous Learning:
- Multiage groupings
- Contribute meaningfully to the community
- Depth of learning as well as breadth of coverage
- Inquiry driven
- Self-paced
- Assessments designed to drive improvement

Quotes from the author

“This is a game in which the question is ‘Are you smart?’ rather than “’How are you smart?’”
“We need to refocus our energy on cultivating the unique abilities of each young person rather than continue to reinforce largely arbitrary and outdated hierarchies of merit.”
“We still haven’t found a way to teach young people how what they learn in school relates to the lives we want them to live and the lives they want to live.”
“None of our major efforts at education reform in America have addressed the nineteenth-century template of the system itself. Schools still answer to the mechanistic, reductionistic tendencies that informed their development.”
“... students in factory-model schools are moved along a straight line, from ignorance to knowledge, in discrete, progressive stages.”
“Helping a young person grow as themselves by attending to the physical, intellectual, social, emotional and spiritual aspects of their being is the collective work of families, schools, communities and societies.”
“Change in human-centered systems like schools does not happen in response to increased pressure from the outside or by tweaking this or that element in hopes of creating comprehensive results. It happens by creating conditions that invite change from within.”
“I found that schools tended to fit into three categories- three broad educational orientations that capture the most common patterns in teaching and learning; conventional, whole child/innovative reform and human-centered/liberatory (HIL).”
“Children learn that they’re ‘smart’ or ‘dumb’ based on how quickly they master a very narrow set of skills.”
“As we engage in the relational aspects of change, we must be careful to attend to both what we work on and how we undertake the work. This includes how we engage communities in these conversations and the work, how we engage students in their learning, how we design learning experiences and how we measure outcomes.”
“New information-management systems and apps will enable learners from ages 13-93 to carry with them a blockchain or electronic resume to which they can add credentials and certificates whenever they acquire a new skill.”Quotes from others

“While detailed knowledge of a single area once guaranteed success, today the top rewards go to those who can operate with equal aplomb in starkly different realms.” - Daniel Pink

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” - Thomas Edison
“The creative person with limitless imagination and no money can make a better film than the talentless mogul with the limitless checkbook every time…Take advantage of your disadvantages, feature the few assets you may have, and work harder than anyone else around you.” - Robert Rodriquez
“New approaches aligned with HIL values must be different in three main ways: they must recognize student growth over a multiyear period rather than over nine-month learning cycles; they must honor the value of personalized processes and outcomes for each student; and they must be designed to give support and feedback to schools while providing assurance to stakeholders and communities that all children are being served well.”