Abandon lectures, memorisation and tests. Start to learn by doing and practice, not theory.

In this blog post Roger Schank: Only two things wrong with education: 1) What we teach; 2) How we teach Don Clark looks at the work of Roger Schank.

If you have any interest in education then this is well worth the read. Here are a few excerpts that resonated with me and might wet your appetite.:

School, he thinks, has turned into a funnelling process for Universities. This is a big mistake. His solution is to have lots of curricula and allow people to follow their curiosity and interests, as this is what drives real, meaningful and useful learning, as opposed to memorisation and hoop jumping

Credit: Roger Schank: Only two things wrong with education: 1) What we teach; 2) How we teach by Don Clark

Schank ... wants to abandon lectures, memorisation and tests. Start to learn by doing and practice, not theory. Stop lecturing and delivering dollops of theory. Stop building and sitting in classrooms. We need to teach cognitive processes and acquire skills through the application of these processes, not fearing failure.

Credit: Roger Schank: Only two things wrong with education: 1) What we teach; 2) How we teach by Don Clark

He prefers to deliver learning from mentored experience, not from direct instruction presented out of context.

Credit: Roger Schank: Only two things wrong with education: 1) What we teach; 2) How we teach by Don Clark

The article confirms my view just how broken our educational system is. I think we are going to see some big changes over the coming years.